Bottom-up and top-down control of dispersal across major organismal groups

Emanuel A Fronhofer (1, 2, 3) , Delphine Legrand (4) , Florian Altermatt (1, 3) , Armelle Ansart (5) , Simon Blanchet (4, 6) , Dries Bonte (7) , Alexis Chaine (4) , Maxime Dahirel (5, 7) , Frederik de Laender , Jonathan de Raedt (7) , Lucie Di Gesu (6) , Staffan Jacob (8) , Oliver Kaltz (2) , Estelle Laurent (8) , Chelsea J Little (3, 1) , Luc Madec (5) , Florent Manzi (2) , Stefano Masier (7) , Felix Pellerin (6) , Frank Pennekamp (3) , Nicolas Schtickzelle (8) , Lieven Therry (4) , Alexandre Vong (4) , Laurane Winandy (6) , Julien Cote (6)

1 EAWAG - Swiss Federal Insitute of Aquatic Science and Technology [Dübendorf]
2 UMR ISEM - Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier
3 UZH - Universität Zürich [Zürich] = University of Zurich
4 SETE - Station d'écologie théorique et expérimentale
5 ECOBIO - Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution [Rennes]
6 EDB - Evolution et Diversité Biologique
7 UGENT - Universiteit Gent = Ghent University
8 UCL - Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain

Ecology and evolution unfold in spatially structured communities, where dispersal links dynamics across scales. Because dispersal is multicausal, identifying general drivers remains challenging. In a coordinated distributed experiment spanning organisms from protozoa to vertebrates, we tested whether two fundamental determinants of local dynamics, top-down and bottom-up control, generally explain active dispersal. We show that both factors consistently increased emigration rates and use metacommunity modelling to highlight consequences on local and regional dynamics.

Domains: Environmental Sciences; Biodiversity and Ecology

Emanuel A Fronhofer, Delphine Legrand, Florian Altermatt, Armelle Ansart, Simon Blanchet, et al.. Bottom-up and top-down control of dispersal across major organismal groups. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2018, 2 (12), pp.1859-1863. ⟨10.1038/s41559-018-0686-0⟩. ⟨hal-01936819⟩