Abstract
Dispersal and adaptation represent two ways that allow species to persist in changing environments. Yet, we lack an understanding of how these processes interact to affect species persistence, especially in communities where biotic interactions greatly complicate responses to environmental change. Here we use a stochastic metacommunity model to show that dispersal and adaptation to environmental change can have conflicting contributions to biodiversity maintenance. Both dispersal and adaptation to environmental change independently contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity. But, when species both adapt and disperse, faster adapting species evolve to hold onto their initial ranges, thus impeding slower adapting species from shifting their ranges and thereby causing extinctions. Importantly, these differences in adaptation speed emerge as the result of competition, which alters population sizes and colonization success. Thus, the maintenance of biodiversity in changing environments depends jointly on rates of dispersal and adaptation, and critically, the interaction between these processes.
Footnotes
Statement of authorship PLT conceived of the study. EF and PLT wrote the model and performed the analysis. PLT wrote the first draft of the manuscript and EF contributed substantially to revisions.
Data accessibility statement The simulation code produced for and used in this study is available on github. Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.2019881