Inferring dispersal in connected ecosystems from species abundance datasets

Dispersal---the movement of organisms between communities---is a fundamental ecological process that shapes the composition and dynamics of ecosystems, regulating diversity across local and regional scales. However, directly measuring dispersal requires the constant observation of immigration and emigration, which is practically infeasible. Yet increased dispersal characteristically produces more diverse and less variable ecosystems, attributes that are imprinted upon an ecosystem's species abundance distribution. Here we present two novel methods for inferring dispersal from species abundance distributions (e.g., those collected by sequencing) under the analytically tractable Neutral Community Model. We propose community sampling guidelines and apply our methodology to empirical wastewater, fish, and coral reef datasets, demonstrating how to robustly estimate dispersal rates between interconnected communities.