$L/N=2$ (lower row) already extend to the entire metapopulation. In spite of the fact that the matrices displayed here are only *examples* of randomly generated matrices, this trend is representative. For instance all simulations performed for $N=100$ and $L/N>2$ resulted in dispersal matrices with a single cluster only. Note that our results are based on much larger metapopulations consisting of $N=100$ patches.](balanced-example.eps){width="\textwidth"}

Previous works demonstrated that changes in the symmetry of dispersal patterns in particular affect the local symmetry of migrant flow, since asymmetry can result in *donor*- and *recipient*-dominated patches not present in symmetric networks [@Vuilleumier06]. In order to isolate the effect of the degree of symmetry from these secondary effects, we focus on a specific set of dispersal patterns: we restrict our main analysis to dispersal patterns with the number of dispersal connections, $L$, being an integer multiple of $N$ randomly distributed on the patches under the constraint, that each patch obtains exactly $L/N$ in- and outgoing connections with defined degree of symmetry. The random patterns considered, hence, are *regular* with the connections evenly distributed to all patches available [@Artzy-Randrup10; @NetworkAnalysis]. An algorithm efficiently generating regular random dispersal patterns for small and intermediate $L/N$ and arbitrary degrees of 