Metapopulation dynamics and distribution, and environmental heterogeneity induced by niche construction

Niche construction means that all organisms modify their environments, also known as ecosystem engineering. Organism–environmental relations induced by niche construction profoundly influence the dynamics, competition, and diversity of metapopulations. Single-species model shows a positive feedback between metapopulation and environmental resources, which leads to threshold phenomena in dynamics. Lattice model suggests that ‘ecological imprint’ is formed by niche construction in spatial habitat. Ecological imprint leads to the self-organized spatial heterogeneity of environments and species’ distribution limits. In competitive systems, niche construction leads to alternative competitive consequences, which implies that trade-offs between the abilities of competition, colonization, and niche construction are important to competitive coexistence. Ecological imprint in competitive systems can weaken the spatial competitive intensity by spatial heterogeneity and segregation of species’ distributions. In metapopulation community, positive niche construction leads to exclusion of intermediate species with odd-numbered species richness and oscillation with even-numbered species richness; negative niche construction has opposite results. These results suggest that species richness may be critical to community’s dynamics and structure. Extinction of some species can lead to dramatic change of dynamical stability, oscillations or exclusions, or even chain reactions that damage the community structure.