Self-consistent dispersal puts tight constraints on the spatiotemporal organization of species-rich metacommunities.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity is often attributed to a dynamic equilibrium between the immigration and extinction of species. This equilibrium forms a common basis for studying ecosystem assembly from a static reservoir of migrants-the mainland. Yet, natural ecosystems often consist of many coupled communities (i.e., metacommunities), and migration occurs between these communities. The pool of migrants then depends on what is sustained in the ecosystem, which, in turn, depends on the dynamic migrant pool. This chicken-and-egg problem of survival and dispersal is poorly understood in communities of many competing species, except for the neutral case-the "unified neutral theory of biodiversity." Employing spatiotemporal simulations and mean-field analyses, we show that self-consistent dispersal puts rather t

SUBMITTER: Denk J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9245702 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature