A Model of Survival Times for predator Populations: The Case of the Army Ants

摘要

We develop a method to estimate the expected time of survival of a predator popula- tion as a function of the size of the habitat island on which it lives and the dynamic parameters of the population and its prey. The model may be thought of either as a patch occupancy model for a structured population or as a model of metapopulation type. The method is applied to a keystone predator species, the neotropical army ant Eciton burchelli.