Should I Stay or Should I Go: Partially Sedentary Populations Can Outperform Fully Dispersing Populations in Response to Climate-Induced Range Shifts.

Global mean temperatures have increased by 0.72 [Formula: see text]C since the 1950s, and climate warming is resulting in geographical shifts in the range limits of many species. Climate velocity is estimated to be 0.42 km/year, and if a species fails to adapt to the new climate, it must track the location of its climatically constrained niche in order to survive. Dispersal has an important role to play in enabling a population to shift is geographical range limits, but many species are partially sedentary, with only a fraction of the population dispersing each year. We ask, can partially sedentary populations keep pace with climate or will such populations be more vulnerable to extinction? Through the development of a moving-habitat integrodifference equation model, we show that, provided climate velocity is not too large, partially sedentary populations can outperform fully dispersing populations in one of two ways: (i) by persisting at climate speeds where a fully dispersing population cannot, and (ii) exhibiting higher population densities. Moreover, we find that positive density-dependent dispersal can further improve the likelihood a population can persist. Our results highlight the positive role that non-dispersers may play in mitigating the effects of overdispersal and facilitating population persistence in a warming world.

Diffusion in a disk with inclusion: Evaluating Green's functions.

We give exact Green's functions in two space dimensions. We work in a scaled domain that is a circle of unit radius with a smaller circular "inclusion", of radius a, removed, without restriction on the size or position of the inclusion. We consider the two cases where one of the two boundaries is absorbing and the other is reflecting. Given a particle with diffusivity D, in a circle with radius R, the mean time to reach the absorbing boundary is a function of the initial condition, given by the integral of Green's function over the domain. We scale to a circle of unit radius, then transform to bipolar coordinates. We show the equivalence of two different series expansions, and obtain closed expressions that are not series expansions.