We introduce an evolutionary metacommunity of multitrophic food webs on several habitats coupled by migration. In contrast to previous studies that focus either on evolutionary or on spatial aspects, we include both and investigate the interplay between them. Locally, the species emerge, interact and go extinct according to the rules of the well-known evolutionary food web model proposed by Loeuille and Loreau in 2005. Additionally, species are able to migrate between the habitats. With random migration, we are able to reproduce common trends in diversity-dispersal relationships: Regional diversity decreases with increasing migration rates, whereas local diversity can increase in case of a low level of dispersal. Moreover, we find that the total biomasses in the different patches become similar even when species composition remains different. With adaptive migration, we observe species compositions that differ considerably between patches and contain species that are descendant from ancestors on both patches. This result indicates that the combination of spatial aspects and evolutionary processes affects the structure of food webs in different ways than each of them alone.
Speciation by local adaptation and isolation by distance in extended environments
Instituto de Física ‘Gleb Wataghin’, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Unicamp（坎皮纳斯州立大学 Gleb Wataghin 物理研究所）；Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Unicamp（坎皮纳斯州立大学生物研究所）
