Evolving dispersal: where to go next?

Habitat destruction and global climate change are two major threats to the persistence of ecosystems. The probability that a species survives such changes depends on its ability to track environmental shifts, either by moving between patches of habitat or by rapidly adapting to local conditions. This explains why the evolution of dispersal has become an integrative topic of paramount importance in evolutionary and behavioral ecology, as demonstrated by a recent conference*. A wide panel of researchers, who highlighted the recent major advances and the most promising lines of future research, were present at this meeting.