Interactions between disturbance and dispersal reduce persistence thresholds in a benthic community.

The article presents a study that examined how incorporating restricted colonist dispersal decreases the range of spatial and temporal rates of disturbance under which benthic communities can persist, using model parameters representative of a New Zealand marine biogenic-structured community. Researchers used a spatially explicit patch dynamic model to show the interaction of the disturbance regime and colonization processes in regulating community dynamics and landscape structure in marine benthic systems. They concluded that the scale of the disturbance regime and dispersal processes are fundamentally coupled, and knowing the scales of both processes is important in predicting change in the structure and diversity of benthic communities threatened by cumulative change.