Search

Dispersal is universally considered important for biodiversity conservation. However, the significance of long- as opposed to short-distance dispersal is insufficiently recognized in the conservation context. Long-distance dispersal (LDD) events, although typically rare, are crucial to population spread and to maintenance of genetic connectivity. The main threats to global biodiversity involve excessive LDD of elements alien to ecosystems and insufficient dispersal of native species, for example, because of habitat fragmentation. In this paper, we attempt to bridge the gap in the treatment of LDD by reviewing the conservation issues for which LDD is most important. We then demonstrate how taking LDD into consideration can improve conservation management decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue ofDiversity and Distributionspresents six papers that contribute to the assembly of a general research agenda for studying long-distance dispersal (LDD) across a variety of taxonomic groups (e.g. birds, fish, aquatic invertebrates and plants), ecosystems (e.g. terrestrial and marine ecosystems, wetlands and grasslands) and thematic fields (e.g. biological transport, marine biology, biogeochemistry and biodiversity conservation). This editorial emphasizes the need to develop a network integrating different research approaches (‘yellow brick roads’) to address the great challenge (‘finding the end of the rainbow’) of quantifying, understanding and predicting LDD and its implications. I review the key avenues for future research suggested in the special issue contributions, and stress the critical importance of properly considering the spatial and temporal scales relevant to the process and system of interests. I propose combining absolute and proportional definitions of LDD as a default practice in any investigation of LDD processes. When LDD is defined primarily by an absolute critical distance that characterizes key feature(s) of the system of interest, a quantitative assessment of the proportion of dispersal events expected to move beyond this critical threshold distance should also be provided. When LDD is defined primarily by a certain small fraction of dispersal events that travel longer than all others, an estimate of the absolute distance associated with this high percentile at the tail of the dispersal curve should also be added. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]