Ecologically Sustainable Partitioning of a Metapopulations Network

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to partition ecological networks to ensure population stability by combining stability analysis with graph partitioning, providing conditions for safe habitat separation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach integrating dynamical stability analysis with graph algorithms to identify ecologically safe habitat partitions.

Findings

Partitioning is safe when algebraic connectivity exceeds local instabilities.

Derived necessary and sufficient conditions for stable graph edge removal.

Proposed heuristic algorithm effectively finds stable partitions.

Abstract

A stable population network is hard to interrupt without any ecological consequences. A communication blockage between patches may destabilize the populations in the ecological network. This work deals with the construction of a safe cut passing through metapopulations habitat such that populations remain stable. We combine the dynamical system stability analysis with graph partitioning algorithms in our approach to the problem. It finds such a safe construction, when one exists, provided the algebraic connectivity of the graph components is stronger than all the spatially local instabilities in the respective components. The dynamics of the populations on the spatially discrete patches (graph nodes) and their spatial communication with other patches is modeled as a reaction-diffusion system. By reversing the Turing-instability idea the stability conditions of the partitioned system are found to depend on local dynamics of the metapopulations and the Fiedler value of the Laplacian matrix of the graph. This leads to the necessary and sufficient conditions for removal of the graph edges subject to the stability of the partitioned graph networks. An heuristic bisection graph partitioning algorithm has been proposed and examples illustrate the theoretical result.