Pelagic Larval Duration and Dispersal Distance Revisited

I present dispersal distances for 44 species with data on propagule duration (PD) for 40 of these. Data were combined with those in Shanks et al. (2003; Ecol. Appl. 13: S159-S169), providing information on 67 species. PD and dispersal distance are correlated, but with many exceptions. The distribution of dispersal distances was bimodal. Many species with PDs longer than 1 day dispersed less than 1 km, while others dispersed tens to hundreds of kilometers. Organisms with short dispersal distances were pelagic briefly or remained close to the bottom while pelagic. Null models of passively dispersing propagules adequately predict dispersal distance for organisms with short PDs (