symmetry ($\gamma$) is detailed in \[sec:algor-gener-balanc\]. Examples of random connectivity matrices generated for $N=8$ and different combinations of $L/N$ and $\gamma$ are exhibited in Fig.\[fig:Algorithm-examples\]. Please regard that for the simulations metapopulations consisting of $N=100$ are used resulting in connectivity matrices of dimension $100\times100$ instead.

The regular dispersal patterns we use here restrict our analysis to metapopulations with all patches connected at a fixed density independent of the choice of $\gamma$. For $L/N>2$ the largest cluster extends to the entire metapopulation independent from the degree of dispersal symmetry resulting in irreducible connectivity matrices [@Caswell01; @Bode06]. For a detailed discussion of the impact of regularity on our results we refer to Section \[sec:discussion:regul\].

The viability of metapopulations exposed to these dispersal patterns was tested in the following manner: a sample of $100$ dispersal patterns connecting the $N=100$ patches was generated for each combination of $L/N=1,\ldots,10$ and $10$ different values of $\gamma$. For any of these patterns the viability of $10$ independent realisations of metapopulations was tested for different values of the colonisation probability $c$ according to the procedure outlined in Section \[sec:metapopulation-model-vuilleumier\], resulting in a statistics for a total of $1,000$ simulations on $100$ randomly generated connectivity matrices for every choice 