Abstract
This paper investigates the importance of dispersal directionality and river network structure to biodiversity patterns. Our model results suggest that dispersal directionality plays a crucial role in determining biodiversity patterns, even more so than dispersal rates. Dispersal directionality heterogenizes the spatial distribution of abundance, which results in higher extinction rates of rare species and higher β diversity. It induces a few species with very high abundances at the expense of many species with intermediate abundances, thereby lowering α and γ diversities. The river network structure also increases β diversity, i.e., more heterogeneous ecosystems, in comparison to typical two-dimensional landscapes. We find that the interplay between the dispersal directionality and network topology has important consequences on relative species abundance patterns and the distribution of α diversity.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 221-229 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of Theoretical Biology |
Volume | 252 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - May 21 2008 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Biodiversity
- Directionality
- Dispersal
- Network structure
- River network
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Statistics and Probability
- Modeling and Simulation
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Immunology and Microbiology
- General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
- Applied Mathematics