Spread

Abstract

Organisms move or disperse their progenies across space, either via their own motions or by currents and vectors. Spreading models differ on the level of tractability and realism. At the individual level, models of random walks have been developed to capture animal movement in heterogeneous landscapes. At the metapopulation level and regional scale, metapopulation models and demographic models have been developed to explore colonisation dynamics and spatial synchrony. When dispersal kernels are explicit, reaction-diffusion models and integrodifference equations, as well as agent-based models, can be applied for modelling the spread. The development of species distribution models, a set of sophisticated statistical tools, further allows us to trace the potential distribution of species in past and future environmental conditions.