Long-range dispersal promotes species persistence in climate extremes

Abstract

Anthropogenic global warming in this century can act as a leading factor for large scale species extinctions in the near future. Species, in order to survive, need to develop dispersal strategies depending upon their environmental niche. Based on empirical evidence only a few previous studies have addressed how dispersal can evolve with changing temperature. However, for the analytical tractability, there is a need to develop an explicit model to ask how the temperature-dependent dispersal alters ecological dynamics. We investigate the persistence of species in a spatial ecological model, where dispersal is considered as a function of temperature. Spatial persistence is of major concern and dispersal is reasonably an important factor for extinction risk in the context of promoting synchrony. Our study yields how the temperature influences species decision of dispersal, resulting in either short-range or long-range dispersal. We examine synchronous or asynchronous behavior of species under their thermal dependence of dispersal. Moreover, we also analyze the transients to study the collective behavior of species away from their final or asymptotic dynamics. One of the key findings is at the most unfavorable environmental conditions long-range dispersal works out as the driving force for the persistence of species.