Network environmental analysis of spatial arrangement for reserves in Wuyishan Nature Reserve, China

The spatial arrangement of reserves within a network is critical to the long-term persistence of dispersing species. In this paper, based on network environ analysis, an approach is presented to explicitly measure such ecological function, in which the dispersal-based interactions between reserves are considered from a holistic view by exploring not only species' direct dispersals but also their indirect ones. The proposed method first defines the ecological function of spatial arrangement of reserves as the probability that a species will survive for long time in a reserve network, and then expands this function by taking the reserve loss into account when evaluating a species' extinction probability at each reserve. A case study for L. nycthemera and M. thibetana from Wuyishan Nature Reserve, Fujian Province, China, is further conducted. The highest probabilities of long-term survival are identified for both species in the reserve networks that contain several migrations with high successful dispersal probability. In addition, the path number of each common reserve under neighboring scenarios is found to be influenced by the changes of direct dispersal, from which the criteria for protecting and optimizing the spatial configuration of reserves in a nature reserve are derived. For Wuyishan Nature Reserve, these criteria may act as important bases to restrict and guide the development of tourism of surrounding cities and the socio-economic activities of local residents. It is concluded that the proposed method can provide an effective way to examine the ecological function of spatial arrangement of reserve network and contribute to species' long-term persistence in nature reserves.