The color of noise and the evolution of dispersal

The process of dispersal is vital for the long-term persistence of all spec ies and hence is a ubiquitous characteristic of living organisms. A present challenge is to increase our understanding of the factors that govern the dispersal rate of individuals. Here I extend previous work by incorporating both spatial and temporal heterogeneity in terms of patch quality into a s patially explicit lattice model. The spatial heterogeneity is modeled as a two-dimensional fractal landscape, while temporal heterogeneity is included by using one-dimensional noise. It was found that the color of both the sp atial and temporal variability influences the rate of dispersal selected as reddening of the temporal noise leads to a reduction in dispersal, while r eddening of spatial variability results in an increase in the dispersal rat e. These results demonstrate that the color of environmental noise should b e considered in future studies looking at the evolution of life history cha racteristics.