Dispersal Ecology and Evolutionary Dynamics
Summary
Dispersal ecology examines the movement of organisms across space and its implications for population connectivity, community assembly and ecosystem resilience. Evolutionary dynamics explores how dispersal traits evolve in response to environmental heterogeneity, habitat fragmentation and species interactions. Together, these fields investigate processes such as range shifts under climate change, the persistence of metapopulations in patchy landscapes and the spread of invasive species. Recent progress emphasises the plasticity of dispersal behaviour, driven by genetic variation, life-history trade-offs and landscape structure. Integrative models now couple trait evolution with spatial processes to predict biodiversity patterns, local adaptation and eco-evolutionary feedbacks. Such feedbacks occur when evolutionary changes in dispersal alter ecological dynamics, which in turn reshape selection on dispersal traits. Insights from this synthesis inform conservation strategies—designing movement corridors, managing source–sink dynamics and forecasting invasion speeds. By linking individual movement decisions to macroecological outcomes, the discipline provides a unified framework for understanding biotic responses to rapid global change.
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Dispersal Ecology and Evolutionary Dynamics publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in dispersal ecology and evolutionary dynamics across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Dispersal: Movement of individuals or propagules from their origin to new locations, shaping gene flow and population structure.
Range expansion: The process by which a species extends its geographic distribution through colonisation of previously unoccupied habitats.
Metapopulation: A set of spatially separated populations of the same species connected by dispersal and characterised by local extinctions and recolonisations.
Eco‐evolutionary feedback: Reciprocal interactions where evolutionary changes in traits modify ecological dynamics, which in turn influence further evolutionary trajectories.
Spatial sorting: The non-random assembly of individuals with enhanced dispersal abilities at the advancing front of an expanding population, accelerating trait evolution.
Dispersal syndrome: A correlated suite of morphological or life-history traits that collectively determine an organism’s dispersal capacity and strategy.
References
- Range expansion is both slower and more variable with rapid evolution across a spatial gradient in temperature. Ecology Letters (2024).
- The macro-eco-evolutionary interplay between dispersal, competition and landscape structure in generating biodiversity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (2024).
- Ecological and evolutionary consequences of temporal variation in dispersal. Ecography (2023).
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