Influence of isolation degree of spatial patterns on persistence of populations

Spatial patterns are ubiquitous in nature, which have been identified as important factors in dynamics of ecosystems. However, how pattern structures have influence on persistence of populations is far from well being understood. Particularly, whether some characters of spatial pattern can be indicators for ecosystems collapse is not well studied. As a result, we presented a predator–prey system with spatial motion and found that isolation degree (average distance between patterns with high density) of spatial patterns plays an important role in the persistence of populations: If isolation degree is much smaller, then the population will persist; if isolation degree is much larger, then the population density will decrease with increasing space size and run a high risk of extinction as space size is large enough. Our results highlight the relationship between pattern structures and ecosystems collapse.