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Does a Species’ Mobility Determine the Scale at Which It Is Influenced by the Surrounding Landscape Pattern?

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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Species at a site interact with environmental variables of the surrounding landscape, but the spatial extent (scale) at which such interaction is strongest (“scale of effect,” SOE) varies among species. SOE is hypothesized to be driven mainly by species’ mobility, as a more mobile species should interact with environmental variables across larger scales. Yet, previous reviews found little evidence for this expectation. This may be because the actual SOE is often outside the assessed range of scales, as suggested by the fact that the estimated SOE frequently equals the smallest or largest scale investigated. We conducted a systematic review of studies published during the last decade to assess whether SOE can be predicted by mobility-related species traits. We controlled for the effects of several study attributes, and repeated all analyses excluding the SOE values that equaled the smallest or largest scales investigated.

Recent Findings

We found 70 studies reporting 1059 SOE values for 291 species, but ~ 50% of SOE values were not scale sensitive. SOE was weakly related to six mobility-related traits, independently of the taxonomic group, especially after controlling for study attributes. They remained weak after excluding the SOE values that equaled the smallest or largest scales investigated.

Summary

Our results imply that SOE cannot be predicted a priori from mobility-related traits. Therefore, we suggest that multi-scale analyses covering a wide range of scales should become standard practice to ensure we are not missing landscape context effects due to studying them at the wrong scale.

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Data Availability

The data used in the present review is available as Supplementary material (Appendix S1 and S2)

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Martin for the invitation for writing this paper and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. MM-R thanks the Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico (DGAPA)-UNAM for a postdoctoral scholarship. CG-A received a postdoctoral scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Michoacán, Morelia, 58190, Mexico

    Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez

  2. Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Yucatán, Merida, 97357, Mexico

    Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez & Marisela Martínez-Ruiz

  3. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia Vegetal, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, 50.670-901, Brazil

    Jakelyne S. Bezerra

  4. Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Morelia, Michoacán, 58190, Mexico

    Carmen Galán-Acedo

  5. Charles Darwin Foundation, Charles Darwin Research Station, Av. Charles Darwin, Puerto Ayora, Galápagos, 200102, Ecuador

    Miriam San-José

  6. Geomatics and Landscape Ecology Laboratory, Department of Biology, Carleton University, ON, Ottawa, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Carmen Galán-Acedo & Lenore Fahrig

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  1. Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez
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Correspondence to Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez.

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Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez, Marisela Martínez-Ruiz, Jakelyne S. Bezerra, Carmen Galán-Acedo, Miriam San-José, and Lenore Fahrig declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Arroyo-Rodríguez, V., Martínez-Ruiz, M., Bezerra, J.S. et al. Does a Species’ Mobility Determine the Scale at Which It Is Influenced by the Surrounding Landscape Pattern?. Curr Landscape Ecol Rep 8, 23–33 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40823-022-00082-7

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