Metapopulation

A metapopulation is a group of spatially separated populations of the same species that interact with one another at some level, in effect a population of populations. The ecologist Richard Levins coined the term in 1969 to describe the dynamics of insect pests across agricultural fields, though it has since been applied broadly to species living in fragmented habitats. A key feature of a metapopulation is that individual local populations can go extinct while the whole remains stable, because immigrants from healthier populations can recolonize empty habitat patches, a process known as the rescue effect. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/