TY - JOUR T1 - Dispersal: a central trait in life history JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/065151 SP - 065151 AU - Dries Bonte AU - Maxime Dahirel Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/21/065151.abstract N2 - The study of trade-offs among major life history components (age at maturity, lifespan and reproduction) allowed the development of a quantitative framework to understand how environmental variation shapes patterns of biodiversity among and within species.Because every environment is inherently spatially structured, Individuals need to move within and among habitats to maximize fitness. Dispersal is often assumed to be tightly integrated into life histories, in particular within the fast-slow continuum of life-history variation, and this integration is used to explain many aspects of population and community dynamics. Evidence for a general, context-independent, integration of dispersal in life histories is however weak, and suggests that dispersal needs to be considered as a central and independent axis in individual life histories.We synthesize theoretical and empirical evidence on the central role of dispersal and its evolutionary dynamics on the spatial distribution of ecological strategies and its impact on population spread, invasions and coexistence. By applying an optimality framework we show that the inclusion of dispersal as an independent dimension of life histories might substantially change our view on evolutionary trajectories in spatially structured environments.Because changes in the spatial configuration of habitats affect the costs of movement and dispersal, adaptations to reduce these costs will increase phenotypic divergence among and within populations. This phenotypic heterogeneity is anticipated to further impact population and community dynamics. ER -