Synchronous effects produce cycles in deer populations and deer-vehicle collisions

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd..

Population cycles are fundamentally linked with spatial synchrony, the prevailing paradigm being that populations with cyclic dynamics are easily synchronised. That is, population cycles help give rise to spatial synchrony. Here we demonstrate this process can work in reverse, with synchrony causing population cycles. We show that timescale-specific environmental effects, by synchronising local population dynamics on certain timescales only, cause major population cycles over large areas in white-tailed deer. An important aspect of the new mechanism is specificity of synchronising effects to certain timescales, which causes local dynamics to sum across space to a substantial cycle on those timescales. We also demonstrate, to our knowledge for the first time, that synchrony can be transmitted not only from environmental drivers to populations (deer), but also from there to human systems (deer-vehicle collisions). Because synchrony of drivers may be altered by climate change, changes to population cycles may arise via our mechanism.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2021

Erschienen:

2021

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:24

Enthalten in:

Ecology letters - 24(2021), 2 vom: 15. Feb., Seite 337-347

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Anderson, Thomas L [VerfasserIn]
Sheppard, Lawrence W [VerfasserIn]
Walter, Jonathan A [VerfasserIn]
Rolley, Robert E [VerfasserIn]
Reuman, Daniel C [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Letter
Moran effect
Population cycle
Population dynamics
Synchrony
White-tailed deer

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 13.01.2021

Date Revised 13.01.2021

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1111/ele.13650

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM318798182