Does a Species’ Mobility Determine the Scale at Which It Is Influenced by the Surrounding Landscape Pattern?

Purpose of Review Species at a site interact with environmental variables of the surrounding landscape, but the spatial extent (scale) at which such interaction is strongest (“scale of effect,” SOE) varies among species. SOE is hypothesized to be driven mainly by species’ mobility, as a more mobile species should interact with environmental variables across larger scales. Yet, previous reviews found little evidence for this expectation. This may be because the actual SOE is often outside the assessed range of scales, as suggested by the fact that the estimated SOE frequently equals the smallest or largest scale investigated. We conducted a systematic review of studies published during the last decade to assess whether SOE can be predicted by mobility-related species traits. We controlled for the effects of several study attributes, and repeated all analyses excluding the SOE values that equaled the smallest or largest scales investigated. Recent Findings We found 70 studies reporting 1059 SOE values for 291 species, but ~ 50% of SOE values were not scale sensitive. SOE was weakly related to six mobility-related traits, independently of the taxonomic group, especially after controlling for study attributes. They remained weak after excluding the SOE values that equaled the smallest or largest scales investigated. Summary Our results imply that SOE cannot be predicted a priori from mobility-related traits. Therefore, we suggest that multi-scale analyses covering a wide range of scales should become standard practice to ensure we are not missing landscape context effects due to studying them at the wrong scale.