Implications

Source-sink habitats are now of prime importance to conservation ecologists.

The aim is to identify source habitats (as opposed to sink habitats) and to focus conservation efforts on these.

The implications of our study on such efforts are as follows:

• It is a mistake to focus exclusively on source habitats if they are subject to strong environmental fluctuations.
• conservation of a species in mutually connected source and sink habitats will significantly enhance the survival probability of a species rather than focussing on source habitats alone.
• The initial populations of a species at source/sink habitats when migration starts, often determine their continued survival in those habitats (history does matter).