Effects of Dispersal on Stability and Abundance in a Two-Patch Tribolium confusum Model

The effects of dispersal on a population can be either stabilizing or destabilizing depending on the local dynamics of the coupled populations. We investigate this by extending the continuous-time larvae–adult (cLA) model proposed by Brozak et al., with the pupal delay set to zero, to two identical habitat patches connected by linear, symmetric adult dispersal. We demonstrate that dispersal neither stabilizes nor destabilizes the metapopulation, and does not alter equilibrium abundance; it only affects the rate of decay of population differences between patches. This is demonstrated through theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, and preliminary results from ongoing empirical trials are also supportive. These findings suggest that in Tribolium confusum populations, the demographic consequences of dispersal are transient, not asymptotic.