title: Does quasi-local competition lead to pattern formation in metapopulations? An explicit resource competition model.
abstract: In metapopulations, competitive interactions may extend beyond the confines of the local population such that members of neighbouring habitat patches affect each other adversely (quasi-local competition). We derive a model for quasi-local competition from first principles, assuming that individuals compete for shared resources and members of a population spend a certain fraction of their foraging time in the adjacent populations. Contrary to the results of Doebeli and Killingback [2003. Theor. Popul. Biol. 64, 397-416], our model does not produce spatial patterns of population densities in homogeneous environments. Quasi-local competition nevertheless contributes to pattern formation by amplifying the effect of heterogeneities in the external environment, and this amplification can be extremely strong when dispersal is absent. We discuss why apparently similar models lead to contrasting results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of Turku, FIN-20014 Turku, Finland. eva.kisdi@helsinki.fi
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kisdi
authors.forename: Margarete
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Utz
mesh_terms: D003163:Competitive Behavior; D004777:Environment; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011157:Population Dynamics