Climate change in metacommunities : dispersal gives double-sided effects on persistence

• Climate change is increasingly affecting the structure and dynamics of ecological communities bothat local and at regional scales, and this can be expected to have important consequences for theirrobustness and long-term persistence. The aim of the present work is to analyse how the spatialstructure of the landscape and dispersal patterns of species (dispersal rate and average dispersal distance)affects metacommunity response to two disturbances: (i) increased mortality during dispersaland (ii) local species extinction. We analyse the disturbances both in isolation and in combination.Using a spatially and dynamically explicit metacommunity model, we find that the effect of dispersalon metacommunity persistence is two-sided: on the one hand, high dispersal significantly reducesthe risk of bottom-up extinction cascades following the local removal of a species; on the otherhand, when dispersal imposes a risk to the dispersing individuals, high dispersal increases extinctionrisks, especially when dispersal is global. Large-bodied species with long generation times at thehighest trophic level are particularly vulnerable to extinction when dispersal involves a risk. Thissuggests that decreasing the mortality risk of dispersing individuals by improving the quality ofthe habitat matrix may greatly increase the robustness of metacommunities.

Nyckelord

dispersal mortality; extinctions; food webs

migration; rescue effetct; spatial model

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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