Threshold Parameters and Metapopulation Persistence

摘要

A method is presented to estimate the minimum viable metapopulation size based on the basic reproductive number R_0 and the expected time to extinction τ_E for epidemiological models. We exemplify our approach with two simple determin- istic metapopulation models of the patch occupancy type and then proceed to stochastic versions that permit the estimation of the minimum viable metapopu- lation size.