Looking beyond the mountain: dispersal barriers in a changing world.

Summary, in English

Dispersal barriers have demographic, evolutionary and ecosystem-wide consequences. With ongoing changes in the environment, it is likely that some dispersal barriers will disappear while others will appear, and it is crucial to understand these dynamics to forecast species distributions and adaptive potential. Here we review recent literature on the ecological and evolutionary aspects of dispersal to highlight key aspects of dispersal barriers’ dynamics in the face of global change. After defining dispersal barriers, we develop a framework to aid a better understanding of barrier dynamics, which requires, first, to be able to identify barrier types that are most susceptible to change, and, second, to predict species’ responses. This knowledge is a prerequiste for designing species or ecosystem management strategies to increase or reduce connectivity and maintain adaptive potential. This review provides impetus for global change research to explicitly consider dispersal barriers when developing predictions of species and ecosystems’ dynamics