99th ESA Annual Meeting (August 10 -- 15, 2014)

SYMP 13

Integrating Dispersal into Life Histories: Empirical and Theoretical Approaches in Aquatic and Terrestrial Systems

Dispersal has pervasive ecological consequences in both aquatic and terrestrial realms, influencing the potential for populations to respond and persist under environmental change, as well as influencing biological invasions. Natural selection can lead to increased dispersal as a mechanism for capitalizing on spatially and temporally varying environments, to avoid inbreeding and competition, and to seek out suitable mates and breeding habitats. However, traits causing dispersal are also linked to other life history traits (e.g., body size), and this inter-dependency may lead to some component of dispersal occurring as a by-product of selection on correlated traits. As in many areas of ecology, there is a divide between dispersal research done in marine and terrestrial systems; synthesizing across systems can contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the causes of dispersal. In this symposium, we aim to help bridge this divide by bringing together perspectives on dispersal from both terrestrial and aquatic systems, drawing on the ESA 2014 theme "From Oceans to Mountains: It’s All Ecology". Within both marine and terrestrial dispersal research, there is also a mismatch between empirical and theoretical work. Terrestrial empirical studies reveal dispersal to be a complex process with context-dependent decision-making across several phases, while terrestrial theoretical models often depict dispersal as a one-shot movement for simplicity. Within marine systems, most theoretical work focuses on the evolution of reproductive strategies that influence dispersal but may not necessarily lead to displacement that is adaptive while empirical work reveals that dispersal is often constrained by selective pressures on other life history characteristics. In this symposium, speakers will present research that explores the causes of dispersal in the context of complex life histories in a diversity of systems. Three of the six talks will be from terrestrial/freshwater perspectives and three from marine perspectives, with two empirical and one theoretical talk for each realm. The empirical talks will discuss dispersal of marine fish larvae in the context of the life cycles of coral reef fishes, insect dispersal at different spatial scales, plant dispersal as mediated by mutualisms, and constraints on traits influencing larval dispersal within marine invertebrate life histories. The two theoretical talks will discuss the evolutionary factors favoring dispersal in both marine and terrestrial systems. The symposium will end with a discussion of future research directions and the potential for cross-boundary collaborations within dispersal research.