Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat destruction and fragmentation are common processes across multiple temporal and spatial scales in ecosystems. Beyond the naturally occurring perturbations (floods, fires), human society has reshaped most of the natural biomes, but the consequences of these processes are not fully understood. To study the effect of fragmentation and compartmentalization on ecosystem stability we separated habitat destruction from the fragmentation and this resulted in a better understanding of the effect of stabilization processes of a simple prey–predator system. Compartmentalization has a negative effect, especially for the predators, and they commonly became extinct even if the habitat destruction is insignificantly small. Stronger compartmentalization accelerates these negative effects. However, if the compartmentalization is paired with low traffic corridors between the compartments, the stability of the whole system could increase. If the compartmentalization and their connections do not go together with habitat destruction, then the ecosystem stability can be saved or increased even if compartmentalized. This finding gives a solid foundation for planning protected areas, especially for ensuring the maintenance of vulnerable key predators and shield prey populations from over-exploitation by the same predators we intend to save.