Research overview: source-sink dynamics in tiger populations

This overview surveys research treating tiger populations as networks of sources, where reproduction exceeds mortality, and sinks, where animals die faster than they breed but persist through immigration. Well-protected reserve cores act as sources that export dispersing young tigers into surrounding sink habitats degraded by poaching, prey loss, and human conflict. Understanding this structure explains why protecting a few key breeding sites can sustain tigers across a wider, otherwise hostile landscape, and why losing a source can quietly collapse a whole region. Studies use survival analysis, dispersal tracking, and demographic modelling to identify which sites are net producers. The framework underpins source-site conservation strategy and corridor planning, because maintaining dispersal between sources and recolonizable sinks is central to long-term tiger persistence in fragmented landscapes.