Graph models of habitat mosaics

Graph theory is a body of mathematics dealing with problems of connectivity, flow, and routing in networks ranging from social groups to computer networks. Recently, network applications have erupted in many fields, and graph models are now being applied in landscape ecology and conservation biology, particularly for applications couched in metapopulation theory. In these applications, graph nodes represent habitat patches or local populations and links indicate functional connections among populations (i.e. via dispersal). Graphs are models of more complicated real systems, and so it is appropriate to review these applications from the perspective of modelling in general. Here we review recent applications of…