Shape and rate of landscape change trajectories influence species persistence

Abstract Species persistence in changing landscapes is shaped not only by present-day habitat conditions but also by the historical trajectories of habitat loss and fragmentation per gradus. Using a simulation-based framework, we investigated how long-term patterns of landscape change, defined by initial and final habitat area and rate of change of landscape configuration, affect species metapopulation persistence. Using 3,600 simulated landscape change scenarios with varying initial and final habitat conditions, we coupled dynamic habitat loss with individual-based metapopulation models to assess time till extinction under different rates of landscape change, scaled to species generation time. Our results show that while final habitat amount strongly influences persistence under rapid change, in slower-changing landscapes, species persistence is substantially modulated by historical habitat extent and the trajectory of landscape configuration. Effective mesh size (MESH) and its rate of change was a stronger predictor of persistence in scenarios with high initial habitat. In contrast, the number of patches (NP) was more influential in already degraded or low-change scenarios, where final configuration closely aligned with initial conditions. Notably, we observed long extinction delays in landscapes that began with high habitat area and connectivity but became fragmented gradually, highlighting that historical continuity can mask imminent extinction risk in current fragmented systems. Crucially, species persistence correlated most strongly with the rate of change in MESH and NP when scaled to species generation time, revealing that extinction lags are driven by how quickly habitat configuration deteriorates relative to species’ life cycles. These findings underscore the need to incorporate long-term changes of spatial configuration into biodiversity assessments, as present-day species presence may hold underlying extinction debts.