How does adaptive consumer movement affect population dynamics in consumer–resource metacommunities with homogeneous patches?

This article uses simple models to explore the impact of adaptive movement by consumers on the population dynamics of a consumer–resource metacommunity consisting of two identical patches. Consumer–resource interactions within a patch are described by the Rosenzweig–MacArthur predator–prey model, and these dynamics are assumed to be cyclic in the absence of movement. The per capita movement rate from one patch to the other is an increasing function of the difference between the per capita birth minus death rate in the destination patch and that in the currently occupied patch. Several variations on this model are considered. Results show that adaptive movement frequently creates anti-phase cycles in the two patches; these suppress the predator–prey cycle and lead to low temporal variation of the total population sizes of both species. Paradoxically, even when movement is very sensitive to the fitness difference between patches, perfect synchrony of patches is often much less likely than in comparable systems with random movement. Under these circumstances adaptive movement of consumers often generates differences in the average properties of the two patches. In addition, mean global densities and responses to global perturbations often differ greatly from similar systems with no movement or random movement.