nicholaswunz/dispersal-meta-analysis

Paper - Physiology can predict animal activity, exploration, and dispersal

Does physiology predict dispersal?

This repository contains code and data needed to reproduce the article:

Wu N. C., & Seebacher, F. (2022) Physiology can predict animal activity, exploration, and dispersal. Communications Biology, 5, 109. DOI:

Raw data

• ind_disp_raw_data.csv - Raw data for individual movement used for the analysis.
• pop_disp_raw_data.csv - Raw data for range expansion used for the analysis.

R codes

• disp_analysis.R - Data cleaning, meta-analysis and figure production.
• spatial_map_analysis.R - Code to reproduce Figure 1.

Extra files

• COMMSBIO-21-2910_SI.PDF - Supplementary file includes statistical outcomes, additional figures, and descriptions from the main document.

Abstract

Physiology can underlie movement, including short-term activity, exploration of unfamiliar environments, and larger scale dispersal, and thereby influence species distributions in an environmentally sensitive manner. We conducted meta-analyses of the literature to establish, firstly, whether physiological traits underlie activity, exploration, and dispersal by individuals (88 studies), and secondly whether physiological characteristics differed between range core and edges of distributions (43 studies). We show that locomotor performance and metabolism influenced individual movement with varying levels of confidence. Range edges differed from cores in traits that may be associated with dispersal success, including metabolism, locomotor performance, corticosterone levels, and immunity, and differences increased with increasing time since separation. Physiological effects were particularly pronounced in birds and amphibians, but taxon-specific differences may reflect biased sampling in the literature, which also focussed primarily on North America, Europe, and Australia. Hence, physiology can influence movement, but undersampling and bias currently limits general conclusions.

Keywords: energetics, locomotor performance, metabolism, meta-analysis, range edge, environmental change

License

This repository is provided by the authors under the MIT License.