title: Ecological conditions favoring budding in colonial organisms under environmental disturbance.
abstract: Dispersal is a topic of great interest in ecology. Many organisms adopt one of two distinct dispersal tactics at reproduction: the production of small offspring that can disperse over long distances (such as seeds and spawned eggs), or budding. The latter is observed in some colonial organisms, such as clonal plants, corals and ants, in which (super)organisms split their body into components of relatively large size that disperse to a short distance. Contrary to the common dispersal viewpoint, short-dispersal colonial organisms often flourish even in environments with frequent disturbances. In this paper, we investigate the conditions that favor budding over long-distance dispersal of small offspring, focusing on the life history of the colony growth and the colony division ratio. These conditions are the relatively high mortality of very small colonies, logistic growth, the ability of dispersers to peacefully seek and settle unoccupied spaces, and small spatial scale of environmental disturbance. If these conditions hold, budding is advantageous even when environmental disturbance is frequent. These results suggest that the demography or life history of the colony underlies the behaviors of the colonial organisms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Value and Decision Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Mayuko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nakamaru
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
authors.forename: Takenori
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takada
authors.affiliation: Department of Value and Decision Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan; The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Akiko
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ohtsuki
authors.affiliation: Department of Value and Decision Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan; The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Sayaki U
authors.initials: SU
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.affiliation: Department of Value and Decision Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Kanan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Miura
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Agriculture, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Kazuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tsuji
mesh_terms: D063147:Animal Distribution; D000818:Animals; D055669:Ecological and Environmental Phenomena; D004777:Environment; D015233:Models, Statistical; D063148:Plant Dispersal; D011336:Probability; D012098:Reproduction; D062206:Spatial Analysis