Experimental dispersal reveals characteristic scales of biodiversity in a natural landscape.

ABSTRACT: Ecological theory posits that dispersal among habitat patches links local communities and is a key "regional" process that maintains biological diversity. However, manipulations required to experimentally test regional processes are infeasible for most systems, and thus more work is needed to detect the scales at which regional processes manifest and their overall effect on diversity. In a Californian grassland, a hotspot for global biodiversity, we used a seed vacuum to increase dispersal at spatial scales varying from 1 m to 10 km while maintaining a realistic spatial structure of species pools and environmental conditions. We found that dispersal limitation has a profound influence on diversity; species richness increased with the spatial scale of seed mixing, doubling in plots that rec

SUBMITTER: Germain RM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5410805 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature