Abstract
Population dynamics models have traditionally been applied to oceanography primarily for the assessment of macrofauna stocks, and occasionally for prediction of plankton blooms. As the questions associated with global warming loom ever larger, the latter application will grow increasingly important in light of the large potential CO₂ sink via photosynthesis in phytoplankton. Discrete time logistic population models can be coupled to represent metapopulations of plankton. Such coupling is explicitly shown to be fundamentally important to the results of the model for even infinitesimal coupling parameters. Furthermore, the qualitative behavior of the metapopulation model is sensitively dependent on the details of the coupling. This implies that mistreatment of a metapopulation by application of an inappropriate uncoupled discrete logistic model, or even the wrong set of coupled equations, may result in significant error in prediction of that population's evolution and subsequent effect on the environment.
Rank, Jeffery Aaron (2001). Spatial heterogeneity and the importance of patchiness in marine metapopulations: an analysis of coupled discrete logistic equations. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -2001 -THESIS -R38.