SPATIAL POPULATION-DYNAMICS OF A MARINE ORGANISM WITH A COMPLEX LIFE-CYCLE

Presents a modeling framework within which mesoscale features in ocean currents can be integrated with coastal habitat structure to predict the distribution and abundance of a marine organism with a coastal adult phase and a pelagic larval phase. The processes in the model that influence larvae away from shore are advection, diffusion and mortality; the processes influencing larvae adjacent to the coast are settlement and reproduction by adaults. Adults on the coast are influenced by recruitment, mortality, and the availability of suitable habitat. Larvae are passive particles in the ocean whose movement is modeled with a transport equation. Age-integrated biological parameters for the barnacle Balanus glandula are used in numerical examples. A 1-dimensional model illustrates the interaction of eddy-diffusion and larval mortality in determining larval wastage that, in turn, affects whether a species can persist. In a 2-dimensional model, persistence of a population also depends on the length of suitable habitat, the strength and structure of the along-shore flow field, and biological parameters of the species concerned. Initial conditions may have a large influence on the growth and spread of the population, especially in the presence of along-shore flow. -from Authors