From habitat decline to collapse: a spatially explicit approach connecting habitat degradation to destruction

Abstract

Habitat loss, driven primarily by anthropogenic activity, significantly threatens ecosystem sustainability. While it is well understood that habitat loss is the leading contributor to declines in biodiversity worldwide, the connection between habitat degradation, destruction, and different locomotion strategies remains unclear. We use a reaction-diffusion framework to analyze the effects of habitat loss on population persistence and abundance. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an extinction threshold, beyond which further degradation of the environment predicts deterministic extirpation. Our results offer a robust analytical connection between habitat degradation and destruction, providing a mechanistic understanding of species persistence under varying environmental conditions and differing locomotion strategies.