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Analytical and numerical tools for diffusion-based movement models

Otso Ovaskainen

Theoretical Population Biology, 2008, vol. 73, issue 2, 198-211

Abstract: I present a general diffusion-based modeling framework for the analysis of animal movements in heterogeneous landscapes, including terms representing advection, mortality, and edge-mediated behavior. I use adjoint operator theory to develop mathematical machinery for the assessment of a number of biologically relevant quantities, such as occupancy times, hitting probabilities, quasi-stationary distributions, the backwards equation, and conditional probability densities. I derive finite-element approximations, which can be used to obtain numerical solutions in domains which do not allow for an analytical treatment. As an example, I model the movements of the butterfly Melitaea cinxia in an island consisting of a set of habitat patches and the intervening matrix habitat. I illustrate the behavior of the model and the mathematical theory by examining the effects of a hypothetical movement barrier and advection caused by prevailing wind conditions.

Keywords: Diffusion; Advection; Random walk; Movement; Edge-mediated behavior; Heterogeneous landscape; Mark-recapture; Corridor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:73:y:2008:i:2:p:198-211

DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2007.11.002

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