Estimating the Parameters of Survival and Migration of Individuals in Metapopulations

Ecologists working with metapopulations are interested in the rate of migration among several local populations, mortality during migration, and the scaling of migration rate with habitat patch area and isolation. We describe a model of individual capture histories obtained from multisite mark–release–recapture studies, which allows one to measure these parameters using maximum likelihood estimation. The model yields separate estimates of mortality within habitat patches and mortality during migration, on the assumption that only the latter is affected by the isolation of the source population. The model is suitable for studies involving 10 or more populations, with differences in habitat patch areas and isolation, and in which several hundred individuals have been marked and recaptured. We apply the model to a metapopulation of the butterfly Melitaea diamina with 14 local populations, 557 marked individuals, and 1301 recaptures. Immigration and emigration scaled as patch area to power 0.2. Roughly half of the daily losses of individuals from habitat patches of 1 ha in area were due to emigration, 1 km, and 16% of all deaths were estimated to have occurred during migration. Programs are available to calculate the parameter estimates, their confidence intervals, and goodness-of-fit tests.