Assessing the impact of dispersal on zooplankton community structure

Abstract

To explore the influence of dispersal on community composition, we conducted an experiment to quantify the migration necessary to homogenize diverse, taxonomically distinct zooplankton communities. While the communities in unmixed controls showed divergent or null trajectories over time, dispersal magnitudes in excess of ∼1 total mesocosm volume resulted in significant community convergence. These results provide the first experimentally derived threshold for dispersal, beyond which zooplankton communities begin to homogenize in composition. © 2011 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press.