Impacts of species dispersal patterns on a three-species food web
摘要
Species dispersal plays a critical role in shaping the spatial structure of communities and ultimately determines species distributions. In this study, we incorporated spatial factors and constructed a mathematical model of spatial community dynamics using a three-species food web to explore how different dispersal patterns influence species coexistence in a landscape of habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. We further examined how variation in colonization rates under different dispersal strategies affects species within the food web. The results show that: (1) In landscapes experiencing habitat fragmentation and habitat loss, increasing dispersal range enlarges the coexistence region of species; (2) Coexistence is maximized at intermediate dispersal rates and declines when dispersal is either too weak or too strong; (3) Changes in dispersal patterns can either promote or inhibit coexistence, depending on the direction and magnitude of the changes; (4) when all species adopt global dispersal, habitat loss exerts a progressively negative effect on each species, whereas habitat fragmentation has no impact. This study provides theoretical insights into the role of dispersal in shaping species distributions and offers a foundation for future research on species dispersal dynamics.