Environmental Engineering Reference
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Fig. 9.5 Life cycle of an age- and stage-structured population. In each of the three development
stages different age classes are passed through, for each stage a Leslie model is set up. The
different stages are linked via transition probabilities depending on environmental variables. The
solid arrows denote survival probabilities within one stage, and the dashed ones transition
probabilities into the next stage
(Sondgerath and Muller-Pietralla 1996). In a simulation study it was used to
investigate the effect of habitat fragmentation on the spread of populations
(S
oder 2002). Recently, the extended Leslie model was applied
to describe the dynamics of the dragonfly Gomphus vulgatissimus along a latitudi-
nal gradient over Europe (Braune et al. 2008). This will be described in the next
section.
ondgerath and Schr
9.4 An Ecological Application: Effects of Global Change
on the Voltinism in Dragonflies
All model simulations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
show a warming in the future across Europe due to climate change. Several
examples for ecological consequences of recent climate change have been
described; e.g. changes in populations and reproductive biology, changes in phe-
nology, changes in geographic range and ecosystem-level changes (Hickling et al.
2005; Parmesan 2006; Hassall et al. 2007). Studies on European dragonflies show
that some species already exhibit accelerated life cycles and/or their ranges have
shifted northwards (Hassall and Thompson 2008).
Different approaches are in use to model species spatial distributions under
different climate conditions. The species distributions can be predicted by inferring
the environmental requirements of the species from their current geographical
distribution (Climate Envelope Models, see e.g. Ara´ jo et al. 2006 or Hijmans
and Graham 2006). Other approaches are structured population models, which
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