Size-structured demographic models of coral populations

The demographic processes of growth, mortality, and the recruitment of young individuals, are the major organizing forces regulating communities in open systems. Here we present a size-structured (rather than age-structured) population model to examine the role of these different processes in space-limited open systems, taking coral reefs as an example. In this flux-diffusion model the growth rate of corals depends both on the available free-space (i.e. density-dependence) and on the particular size of the coral. In our analysis we progressively study several different forms of growth rate functions to disentangle the effects of free space and size-dependence on the model's stability. Unlike Roughgarden et al. [1985. Demographic theory for an open marine population space-limited recruitment. Ecology 66(1), 54–67], whose principal result is that the growth of settled organisms is destabilizing, we find that size-dependent growth rate often has the potential to endow stability. This is particularly true, if the growth rate is dependent on available free space (i.e. density dependent), but examples are given for growth rates that even lack this property. Further insights into reef system fragility are found through studying the sensitivity of the model steady state to changes in recruitment.