Progresses on the researches of interacting metapopulations

Two or more species can live in the same patch network without any interactions among the respective metapopulations.More interestingly,interspecific interactions might affect the rates of migration,extinction and colonization,in which case interspecific interactions modulate metapopulation dynamics of the species concerned.Related researches are mainly concerned on interspecific competition,predator-prey dynamics and the creation and maintenance of aggregated spatial distributions of species in the absence of any environmental heterogeneity.In this paper,we evaluate progresses on competition,dynamics of predator-prey systems and complex spatial dynamics at the metapopulation level.