Species extinction thresholds in the face of spatially correlated periodic disturbance.
The spatial correlation of disturbance is gaining attention in landscape ecology, but knowledge is still lacking on how species traits determine extinction thresholds under spatially correlated disturbance regimes. Here we develop a pair approximation model to explore species extinction risk in a lattice-structured landscape subject to aggregated periodic disturbance. Increasing disturbance extent and frequency accelerated population extinction irrespective of whether dispersal was local or global. Spatial correlation of disturbance likewise increased species extinction risk, but only for local dispersers. This indicates that models based on randomly simulated disturbances (e.g., mean-field or non-spatial models) may underestimate real extinction rates. Compared to local dispersal, species with global dispersal tolerated more severe disturbance, suggesting that the spatial correlation of disturbance favors long-range dispersal from an evolutionary perspective. Following disturbance, intraspecific competition greatly enhanced the extinction risk of distance-limited dispersers, while it surprisingly did not influence the extinction thresholds of global dispersers, apart from decreasing population density to some degree. As species respond differently to disturbance regimes with different spatiotemporal properties, different regimes may accommodate different species.
Ministry of Education's Key Laboratory of Poyang Lake Wetland and Watershed Research, Jiangxi Normal University, Ziyang Road 99, 330022 Nanchang, China.
Jinbao
J
Liao
State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
Zhixia
Z
Ying
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Maine, 333 Neville Hall, Orono, ME 04469, USA.
David E
DE
Hiebeler
Ministry of Education's Key Laboratory of Poyang Lake Wetland and Watershed Research, Jiangxi Normal University, Ziyang Road 99, 330022 Nanchang, China.
Yeqiao
Y
Wang
Laboratory of Mathematical Ecology, Graduate School of Earth Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, 060-0810 Sapporo, Japan.
Takenori
T
Takada
Research Group Plant and Vegetation Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Antwerp (Campus Drie Eiken), Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk, Belgium.
Ivan
I
Nijs
D053476:Extinction, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical