Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College , Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts , Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2024 Jul 29;379(1907):20230126. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0126. Epub 2024 Jun 24.
Dispersal among local communities is fundamental to the metacommunity concept but is only important to the metacommunity structure if dispersal causes distortions of species abundances away from what local ecological conditions favour. We know from much previous work that dispersal can cause such abundance distortions. However, almost all previous theoretical studies have only considered one species alone or two interacting species (e.g. competitors or predator and prey). Moreover, a systematic analysis is needed of whether different dispersal strategies (e.g. passive dispersal versus demographic habitat selection) result in different abundance distortion patterns, how these distortion patterns change with local food web structure, and how the dispersal propensities of the interacting species might evolve in response to one another. In this article, we show using computer simulations and analytical models that abundance distortions occur in simple food webs with both passive dispersal and habitat selection, but habitat selection causes larger distortions. Additionally, patterns in the evolution of dispersal propensity in interacting species are very different for these two dispersal strategies. This study identifies that the dispersal strategies employed by interacting species critically shape how dispersal will influence metacommunity structure. This article is part of the theme issue 'Diversity-dependence of dispersal: interspecific interactions determine spatial dynamics'.
局域社区间的扩散对于集合种群概念至关重要，但只有当扩散导致物种丰度的扭曲偏离了局部生态条件所偏好的状态时，扩散才对集合种群结构重要。我们从之前的大量研究中了解到，扩散确实会导致这种丰度的扭曲。然而，几乎所有之前的理论研究都只考虑了一个物种或两个相互作用的物种（例如，竞争者或捕食者和猎物）。此外，还需要系统地分析不同的扩散策略（例如，被动扩散与基于生态位的扩散）是否会导致不同的丰度扭曲模式，这些扭曲模式如何随局部食物网结构而变化，以及相互作用物种的扩散倾向如何相互响应而进化。在本文中，我们通过计算机模拟和分析模型表明，被动扩散和基于生态位的扩散都会导致简单食物网中出现丰度扭曲，但基于生态位的扩散会导致更大的扭曲。此外，对于这两种扩散策略，相互作用物种中扩散倾向的进化模式有很大的不同。这项研究表明，相互作用物种所采用的扩散策略对于理解扩散如何影响集合种群结构至关重要。本文是主题为“扩散的多样性依赖性：种间相互作用决定空间动态”的一部分。
