The conflict between adaptation and dispersal for maintaining biodiversity in changing environments.

ABSTRACT: Dispersal and adaptation both allow species to persist in changing environments. Yet, we have limited understanding of how these processes interact to affect species persistence, especially in diverse communities where biotic interactions greatly complicate responses to environmental change. Here we use a stochastic metacommunity model to demonstrate how dispersal and adaptation to environmental change independently and interactively contribute to biodiversity maintenance. Dispersal provides spatial insurance, whereby species persist on the landscape by shifting their distributions to track favorable conditions. In contrast, adaptation allows species to persist by allowing for evolutionary rescue. But, when species both adapt and disperse, dispersal and adaptation do not combine positively

SUBMITTER: Thompson PL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6800316 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature