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Hilderbrand, R.H. 2003. The roles of carrying capacity, immigration, and population synchrony on persistence of stream-resident cutthroat trout. Biological Conservation 110(2):257-266. In a Nutshell: Problem - Cutthroat trout are facing increased risk of extinction due to habitat isolation, fragmentation, and small population size. What - A population model was used to evaluate extinction risk for populations experiencing differing levels of survival, environmental variation, immigration, and quality of habitat. Findings - Results show that extinction risk declines as habitat capacity increases. However, extinction risk rapidly increases with slight increases in environmental variation or decreases in survival. Relatively little immigration between populations mitigates these effects, dramatically reducing extinction risk. These results highlight the importance of maintaining connections between populations. Potential Applications - Results show the importance of connectivity and immigration to prevent population extinction. Several additional rules of thumb are developed for insuring persistence of cutthroat trout populations. |
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