Assessing the impact of dispersal on zooplankton community structure

To explore the influence of dispersal on community composition, we conducted an experiment to quantify the migration necessary to homogenize diverse, taxono-mically distinct zooplankton communities. While the communities in unmixed controls showed divergent or null trajectories over time, dispersal magnitudes in excess of 1 % total mesocosm volume resulted in significant community conver-gence. These results provide the first experimentally derived threshold for disper-sal, beyond which zooplankton communities begin to homogenize in composition