  Dispersal is a key ecological process, that enables local populations to form
spatially extended systems called metapopulations. In the present study, we
investigate how dispersal affects the linear stability of a general
single-species metapopulation model. We discuss both the influence of local
within-patch dynamics and the effects of various dispersal behaviors on
stability. We find that positive density-dependent dispersal and positive
density-dependent settlement are destabilizing dispersal behaviors while
negative density-dependent dispersal and negative density-dependent settlement
are stabilizing. It is also shown that dispersal has a stabilizing impact on
heterogeneous metapopulations that correlates positively with the number of
patches and the connectance of metapopulation networks.
