The Evolution of Marine Larval Dispersal Kernels in Spatially Structured Habitats: Analytical Models, Individual-Based Simulations, and Comparisons with Empirical Estimates.

The Evolution of Marine Larval Dispersal Kernels in Spatially Structured Habitats: Analytical Models, Individual-Based Simulations, and Comparisons with Empirical Estimates.
Am Nat. 2019 Mar;193(3):424-435
Authors: Shaw AK, D'Aloia CC, Buston PM
Abstract
Understanding the causes of larval dispersal is a major goal of marine ecology, yet most research focuses on proximate causes. Here we ask how ultimate, evolutionary causes affect dispersal. Building on Hamilton and May's classic 1977 article "Dispersal in Stable Habitats," we develop analytic and simulation models for the evolution of dispersal kernels in spatially structured habitats. First, we investigate dispersal in a world without edges and find that most offspring disperse as far as possible, opposite the pattern of empirical data. Adding edges to our model world leads to nearly all offspring dispersing short distances, again a mismatch with empirical data. Adding resource heterogeneity improves our results: most offspring disperse short distances with some dispersing longer distances. Finally, we simulate dispersal evolution in a real seascape in Belize and find that the simulated dispersal kernel and an empirical dispersal kernel from that seascape both have the same shape, with a high level of short-distance dispersal and a low level of long-distance dispersal. The novel contributions of this work are to provide a spatially explicit analytic extension of Hamilton and May's ...

Source: The American Naturalist - February 24, 2019 Category: Biology Authors: Shaw AK, D'Aloia CC, Buston PM Tags: Am Nat Source Type: research