# Metapopulation **Domain:** Population Ecology / Distributed Systems **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A **metapopulation** is a set of spatially separated local populations connected by dispersal. Local extinction may occur while the larger system persists through recolonization, provided enough viable habitat and connectivity remain. ## Nexus Context The [[wiki/Bay Checkerspot Butterfly|Bay Checkerspot Butterfly]] studies around Jasper Ridge helped make patch occupancy, extinction and recolonization central to conservation reasoning. [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] uses this structure to connect ecology with distributed computation. The analogy is exact only at the architectural level. Digital replicas do not reproduce or disperse like organisms. Still, both cases reveal that redundancy is conditional: shared energy, shared software defects, synchronized governance or loss of migration routes can turn nominally separate instances into one failure domain. ## Key Insight **Distributed persistence depends less on the number of sites than on the independence, viability and reconnection capacity of those sites.** ## Sources / Provenance - Ilkka Hanski, _Metapopulation Ecology_, 1999. - Stanford Jasper Ridge checkerspot research: https://jrbp.stanford.edu/longterm-studies-bay-checkerspot-butterfly-and-feasibility-reintroduction ## See Also [[wiki/Distributed Intelligence|Distributed Intelligence]], [[wiki/Resilience|Resilience]], [[wiki/Continuity Stack|Continuity Stack]], [[wiki/Correlated Failure|Correlated Failure]]