Biodiversity -- it's in the water

With just four parameters, it’s “an almost ridiculously simple model,” explains EPFL professor Andrea Rinaldo. The model results were compared to extensive data on actual fish species distributions. Various different measures of biodiversity were analyzed, and the researchers were surprised to find that the model captured these complex patterns quite accurately. The model is all the more remarkable for what it does not contain – any reference, anywhere, to the biological properties of individual fish species.

It is a formulation that could be applied to any river system, or in fact, any network at all. All that's needed are the geomorphology of the landscape and an estimate of average dispersal behavior and habitat capacity. This model is general enough that it could be used to explore population migrations or epidemics of water-borne diseases in addition to biodiversity patterns. The researchers plan to extend their work to explore the extent to which simple hydrology can act as the determining factor in a wide range of biodiversity patterns.

“These results are a powerful reminder of the overarching importance of water, and the water-defined landscape, in determining patterns of life,” notes Princeton professor Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe. It provides a framework that could be used to connect large scale environmental changes to biodiversity. Changes in precipitation patterns, perhaps due to global climate change, could be mapped to changes in habitat capacities in the model, ultimately providing a way to estimate how climate change would alter large-scale patterns of biodiversity. It could also be used for an assessment of the impact of specific, local human activities, such as flow re-routing or damming, on the biodiversity patterns in a river network.

More information

Neutral Metacommunity Models Predict Fish Diversity Patterns in Mississippi-Missouri Basin: Rachata Muneepeerakul, Enrico Bertuzzo, Heather J. Lynch, William F. Fagan, Andrea Rinaldo, and Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe; Nature, May 8, 2008

Contact:

Andrea Rinaldo, EPFL: +41 21 693 8034;
Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe, Princeton University: (609)258-2287;