Interspecific dispersal constraints suppress pattern formation in metacommunities

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lawton, Patrick, Fahimipour, Ashkaan K., Anderson, Kurt E.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Lawton, Patrick
Fahimipour, Ashkaan K.
Anderson, Kurt E.
author_facet Lawton, Patrick
Fahimipour, Ashkaan K.
Anderson, Kurt E.
contents Decisions to disperse from a habitat stand out among organismal behaviors as pivotal drivers of ecosystem dynamics across scales. Encounters with other species are an important component of adaptive decision-making in dispersal, resulting in widespread behaviors like tracking resources or avoiding consumers in space. Despite this, metacommunity models often treat dispersal as a function of intraspecific density alone. We show, focusing initially on three-species network motifs, that interspecific dispersal rules generally drive a transition in metacommunities from homogeneous steady states to self-organized heterogeneous spatial patterns. However, when ecologically realistic constraints reflecting adaptive behaviors are imposed -- prey tracking and predator avoidance -- a pronounced homogenizing effect emerges where spatial pattern formation is suppressed. We demonstrate this effect for each motif by computing master stability functions that separate the contributions of local and spatial interactions to pattern formation. We extend this result to species rich food webs using a random matrix approach, where we find that eventually webs become large enough to override the homogenizing effect of adaptive dispersal behaviors, leading once again to predominately pattern forming dynamics. Our results emphasize the critical role of interspecific dispersal rules in shaping spatial patterns across landscapes, highlighting the need to incorporate adaptive behavioral constraints in efforts to link local species interactions and metacommunity structure.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_13098
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Interspecific dispersal constraints suppress pattern formation in metacommunities
Lawton, Patrick
Fahimipour, Ashkaan K.
Anderson, Kurt E.
Populations and Evolution
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Decisions to disperse from a habitat stand out among organismal behaviors as pivotal drivers of ecosystem dynamics across scales. Encounters with other species are an important component of adaptive decision-making in dispersal, resulting in widespread behaviors like tracking resources or avoiding consumers in space. Despite this, metacommunity models often treat dispersal as a function of intraspecific density alone. We show, focusing initially on three-species network motifs, that interspecific dispersal rules generally drive a transition in metacommunities from homogeneous steady states to self-organized heterogeneous spatial patterns. However, when ecologically realistic constraints reflecting adaptive behaviors are imposed -- prey tracking and predator avoidance -- a pronounced homogenizing effect emerges where spatial pattern formation is suppressed. We demonstrate this effect for each motif by computing master stability functions that separate the contributions of local and spatial interactions to pattern formation. We extend this result to species rich food webs using a random matrix approach, where we find that eventually webs become large enough to override the homogenizing effect of adaptive dispersal behaviors, leading once again to predominately pattern forming dynamics. Our results emphasize the critical role of interspecific dispersal rules in shaping spatial patterns across landscapes, highlighting the need to incorporate adaptive behavioral constraints in efforts to link local species interactions and metacommunity structure.
title Interspecific dispersal constraints suppress pattern formation in metacommunities
topic Populations and Evolution
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.13098