I and some colleagues are discussing the meaning in landscape ecology for dispersion, long-distance dispersion, movement, movement patterns, and migration. Some papers introduce the meaning for dispersion and use this as a guide in the work. However, other papers use dispersion and movement as synonymous. Please, bearing mind landscape ecology, someone could help us in these meanings?
In my readings of papers related to landscape ecology the term "dispersal" has been adopted vaguely, frequently meaning any detected movement between local populations that reside in different habitat patches. Those movements may be actual natal dispersal movements, or routine movements that some individuals may make, going back and forth between the patches occasionally. These are different kinds of movement, with different consequences for genetic structure and evolution of (meta)populations. So, some studies in landscape ecology want to focus more on actual (natal) dispersal movements, using terms such as long-distance dispersal (not dispersion, which is the spatial distribution of units, individuals). In the dispersal literature, dispersal movements are generally natal dispersal movements, different from routine movements, which are never referred as dispersal movements. That is my view on these terms, let me know what you think.
Hi Marquinhos! Thank you for your reply. I'm feeling some difficulties to find some broad concepts of different kinds of movements in the landscape ecology, which is different for movement ecology. It seems that researchers in movement ecology and landscape ecology are not talking the same language when applying those concepts and this is a huge task when those two subjects/disciplines meet each other. I am seeing graduate students with landscape projects that have an interface with movement ecology (i.e. corridors or matrix/habitat patches) using the term dispersal as usual movement and using long-distance dispersal as a non-continental migration. I think this could be an issue to researchers understand each other, mainly in this interface.
Oi Alessandra, use of terms vaguely or with multiple meanings always creates difficulties for communication, but it may be worse when someone from landscape ecology describes a process by "dispersal" and the other from movement ecology understands something else. Even within landscape ecology it may be necessary to define clearly what kind of movements are being measured or are appropriate to answer the question of the study. A good short review of the kinds of movements in landscape ecology with examples is in Pe’er et al. (2011, Breaking functional connectivity into components: a novel approach using an individual-based model, and first outcomes. PloS One, 6(8), e22355). But migration is more well defined, restricted to mass movement of a whole population (not individuals).
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