Populations with Explicit Borders in Space and Time: Concept, Terminology, and Estimation of Characteristic Parameters
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Populations with Explicit Borders in Space and Time: Concept, Terminology, and Estimation of Characteristic Parameters Manfred A. Pfeifer Æ Klaus Henle Æ Josef Settele
Received: 23 January 2007 / Accepted: 4 September 2007 / Published online: 21 September 2007 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract Biologists studying short-lived organisms have become aware of the need to recognize an explicit temporal extend of a population over a considerable time. In this article we outline the concept and the realm of populations with explicit spatial and temporary boundaries. We call such populations ‘‘temporally bounded populations’’. In the concept, time is of the same importance as space in terms of a dimension to which a population is restricted. Two parameters not available for populations that are only spatially defined characterise temporally bounded populations: total population size, which is the total number of individuals present within the temporal borders, and total residence time, which is the sum of the residence times of all individuals. We briefly review methods to estimate these parameters. We illustrate the concept for the large blue butterfly (Maculinea nausithous) and outline insights into ecological and conservation-relevant processes that cannot be gained without the use of the concept. Keywords Temporally bounded population Population concepts Total population size Total residence time Discrete generation Population viability analysis Population ecology Maculinea nausithous
M. A. Pfeifer (&) Anebosstrasse 4, 67240 Bobenheim-Roxheim, Germany e-mail: [email protected] K. Henle Department of Conservation Biology, UFZ-Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany e-mail: [email protected] J. Settele Department of Community Ecology, UFZ-Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, Theodor-Lieser-Strasse 4, 06120 Halle, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
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1 Introduction The term ‘‘population’’ is used in many different scientific disciplines, such as sociology and statistics. In general, a population is a group of individuals or items that share one or more characteristics. The different scientific disciplines specify this definition for their special requirements. In ecology, population is a fundamental unit (Barbault 1995). However, like many other fundamental units in ecology (Jax 2002), the term ‘‘population’’ has been defined and used in different ways, but no one definition has satisfied all needs of the naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what is meant by the term ‘‘population’’. Contemporary ecological and population biology textbooks most frequently use a definition similar to that of Krebs (2001), who defines a population ‘‘as a group of organisms of the same species occupying a particular space at a particular time’’. Berryman (1981) uses a similar concept: ‘‘We can think of a population as a group of individuals that live together at the same time and in the same pl
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