Individual dispersal decisions may be affected by the internal state of the individual and the external information of its current environment. Here we estimated the influence of dispersal on survival and investigated if individual phenotype (sex and wing length) and environmental condition (conspecific density and sex-ratio) affected dispersal decisions in the banded damselfly, Calopteryx sple...

BRODY, A. K., and K. B. ARMITAGE. 1985. The effects of adult removal on dispersal of yearling yellow-bellied marmots. Can. J. Zool. 63: 2560-2564. The relative importance of adult-yearling interaction and individual behavioral phenotypes on dispersal of yearling yellow-bellied marmots was investigated. Two marmot colonies near Gothic, Colorado, were studied; one was treated as an experimental c...

Pleistocene extinctions affected mainly large-bodied animals, determining the loss or changes in numerous ecological functions. Evidence points to a central role of many extinct megafauna herbivores as seed dispersers. An important step in understanding the legacy of extinct mutualistic interactions is to evaluate the roles and effectiveness of megafauna herbivores in seed dispersal. Here we us...

Most studies on the causes of animal dispersal focus on species of birds or small mammals, but there are few such studies on solitary carnivores. A complete picture of the causes of animal dispersal is not possible without considering cases on a representative set of animals. The Iberian lynx is a medium-size, solitary carnivore that inhabits metapopulations, where dispersal plays a prominent r...

1. Dispersal ability can influence the importance of dispersal relative to other processes organizing metacommunities, such as species sorting among habitats along environmental gradients. 2. We compare plants with different dispersal modes and habitat affinities, evaluating the roles of environmental and spatial controls on plant community composition in 128 wetlands within 10 km of old-growth...

During last two decades studies on endozoochorous seed dispersal indicated that a large numbers of plant seeds are potentially dispersed and suceefully germinated via animal dung. However, very little is known about the relative importance of endozoochory in germination success of plant species in semi-steppe rangelands. In this paper we examined dung germinating seed content, seed deposition p...

Because seed dispersal influences the environment experienced by seeds, that environment can change as dispersal evolves. The evolutionary potential of dispersal can in turn change as dispersal evolves, if its expression of genetic variation depends on the postdispersal environment. We examined whether seed dispersion patterns have a detectable genetic basis (and therefore evolutionary potentia...

Geographical distributions of terrestrial or freshwater taxa that are broken up by oceans can be explained by either oceanic dispersal or vicariance in the form of fragmentation of a previously contiguous landmass. The validation of plate-tectonics theory provided a global vicariance mechanism and, along with cladistic arguments for the primacy of vicariance, helped create a view of oceanic dis...

Spatial heterogeneity is a strong determinant of host-parasite relationships, however local-scale mechanisms are often not elucidated. Generally speaking, in many circumstances dispersal is expected to increase disease persistence. We consider the case when host populations show density-dependent dynamics and are connected through the dispersal of individuals. Taking the domestic cats (Felis ca...

BACKGROUND Determining the distances over which seeds are dispersed is a crucial component for examining spatial patterns of seed dispersal and their consequences for plant reproductive success and population structure. However, following the fate of individual seeds after removal from the source tree till deposition at a distant place is generally extremely difficult. Here we provide a compari...