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Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0Nature Ecology & Evolution

Dispersal diversity buffers species vulnerability to local extinction

  • Davide Bernardi1,2
  • Giorgio Nicoletti3
  • Prajwal Padmanabha4
  • Samir Suweis1
  • Sandro Azaele1,2
  • Simon A. Levin5,6
  • Andrea Rinaldo7,8
  • Amos Maritan1,2
8 affiliations
  1. 1Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
  2. 2National Biodiversity Future Center, Palermo, Italy
  3. 3Quantitative Life Sciences, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy
  4. 4Department of Fundamental Microbiology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
  5. 5Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ USA
  6. 6High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ USA
  7. 7CMCC Foundation, Euro Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, Lecce, Italy
  8. 8Faculty ENAC, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
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Abstract

Predicting species persistence within ecological communities is a fundamental challenge for both empirical and theoretical ecology. Existing methods span from mechanistic models, whose parameters are difficult to estimate from data, to statistical tools whose context-specific parameters are less interpretable. Here we present a general framework, grounded in the statistical physics of complex systems, that integrates the key processes governing species survival into a single measurable quantity: the competitive balance. This metric quantifies the vulnerability of a focal species to competitive exclusion beyond what is captured by its abundance alone by incorporating the diversity of dispersal strategies and the structure of interspecific interactions within the community. Crucially, the competitive balance can be inferred from spatial abundance data, thus circumventing the need to estimate species traits or dispersal parameters. Our results reveal that greater heterogeneity in dispersal strategies reduces vulnerability to competitive exclusion for a given abundance. We validate the framework using tropical and temperate forest data and discuss how it can be applied to a range of different ecosystems, providing a systemic and interpretable tool for assessing a context-dependent species vulnerability that accounts for its interactions with the entire community.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{bernardi2026dispersal,
  title = {{Dispersal diversity buffers species vulnerability to local extinction}},
  author = {Davide Bernardi and Giorgio Nicoletti and Prajwal Padmanabha and Samir Suweis and Sandro Azaele and Simon A. Levin and Andrea Rinaldo and Amos Maritan},
  journal = {Nature Ecology \& Evolution},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1038/s41559-026-03195-y},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03195-y},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Dispersal diversity buffers species vulnerability to local extinction
AU  - Davide Bernardi
AU  - Giorgio Nicoletti
AU  - Prajwal Padmanabha
AU  - Samir Suweis
AU  - Sandro Azaele
AU  - Simon A. Levin
AU  - Andrea Rinaldo
AU  - Amos Maritan
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/09
JO  - Nature Ecology & Evolution
DO  - 10.1038/s41559-026-03195-y
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03195-y
AB  - Predicting species persistence within ecological communities is a fundamental challenge for both empirical and theoretical ecology. Existing methods span from mechanistic models, whose parameters are difficult to estimate from data, to statistical tools whose context-specific parameters are less interpretable. Here we present a general framework, grounded in the statistical physics of complex systems, that integrates the key processes governing species survival into a single measurable quantity: the competitive balance. This metric quantifies the vulnerability of a focal species to competitive exclusion beyond what is captured by its abundance alone by incorporating the diversity of dispersal strategies and the structure of interspecific interactions within the community. Crucially, the competitive balance can be inferred from spatial abundance data, thus circumventing the need to estimate species traits or dispersal parameters. Our results reveal that greater heterogeneity in dispersal strategies reduces vulnerability to competitive exclusion for a given abundance. We validate the framework using tropical and temperate forest data and discuss how it can be applied to a range of different ecosystems, providing a systemic and interpretable tool for assessing a context-dependent species vulnerability that accounts for its interactions with the entire community.
SN  - 2397-334X
ER  -