Strategic synergies: Dispersal and resource allocation in mitigating tipping cascades

While ecosystems may experience sudden transitions to a degraded state under intensified exploitation, the impact of additional food provision in exploited patchy environments remains largely unexplored. This study investigates the trade-off between connectivity and resource allocation in mitigating tipping points that could lead to metacommunity-level population collapse. We first explore predator-prey dynamics within an isolated patch, investigating the effects of predator harvesting and additional food provision on population persistence. Our results reveal that, while additional food can rescue predators in scarcity, excessive provisioning may disrupt the trophic balance. Strategic harvesting helps mitigate this risk, but multistability across harvesting intensities complicates ecological management. Extending our analysis to a two-patch system with diffusive coupling, we find that a carefully calibrated food share ratio between patches is essential for long-term steady-state coexistence, with the required ratio modulated by coupling strength. However, beyond a critical dispersal threshold, stability can be maintained without strict adherence to a specific supply ratio. While dispersal aids in local predator rescue, higher flow can trigger a tipping point, resulting in catastrophic predator collapses across the metacommunity. Our findings reveal a potential rescue mechanism in which maintaining adequate food quality - ensuring uniformity across patches - is crucial to preventing abrupt population extinction, especially under strong connectivity. Overall, our study underscores the importance of integrating dispersal dynamics and the resource allocation mechanism in shaping ecosystem resilience, providing insight into strategies to mitigate population collapses in fragmented habitats.