Environmental colour affects aspects of single–species population dynamics

Petchey, Owen L.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2000.1066

Cited by 85 publications

(91 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Laboratory experiments on protozoa have shown that population fluctuations can track manipulated environmental colours to some extent [54,55]. However, this result may be unrepresentative for natural populations, because the laboratory conditions were probably designed to suppress other environmental drivers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Poor environmental tracking can make extinction risk insensitive to the colour of environmental noise

et al. 2011

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The relative importance of environmental colour for extinction risk compared with other aspects of environmental noise (mean and interannual variability) is poorly understood. Such knowledge is currently relevant, as climate change can cause the mean, variability and temporal autocorrelation of environmental variables to change. Here, we predict that the extinction risk of a shorebird population increases with the colour of a key environmental variable: winter temperature. However, the effect is weak compared with the impact of changes in the mean and interannual variability of temperature. Extinction risk was largely insensitive to noise colour, because demographic rates are poor in tracking the colour of the environment. We show that three mechanisms-which probably act in many species-can cause poor environmental tracking: (i) demographic rates that depend nonlinearly on environmental variables filter the noise colour, (ii) demographic rates typically depend on several environmental signals that do not change colour synchronously, and (iii) demographic stochasticity whitens the colour of demographic rates at low population size. We argue that the common practice of assuming perfect environmental tracking may result in overemphasizing the importance of noise colour for extinction risk. Consequently, ignoring environmental autocorrelation in population viability analysis could be less problematic than generally thought.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Poor environmental tracking can make extinction risk insensitive to the colour of environmental noise

et al. 2011

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“…It has been explored with a variety of models to address population persistence, responses to environmental variability, and the existence of patterns that characterize intrinsic versus extrinsic processes (e.g. Kaitala et al 1997b;Miramontes & Rohani 1998;Morales 1999;Petchey 2000). Clean signatures identifying these types of process have been evasive and patterns in nature most often reflect their complex interplay.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cluster size distributions: signatures of self–organization in spatial ecologies

Pascual

Roy

Guichard

et al. 2002

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B

104

112

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Three different lattice-based models for antagonistic ecological interactions, both nonlinear and stochastic, exhibit similar power-law scalings in the geometry of clusters. Specifically, cluster size distributions and perimeter-area curves follow power-law scalings. In the coexistence regime, these patterns are robust: their exponents, and therefore the associated Korcak exponent characterizing patchiness, depend only weakly on the parameters of the systems. These distributions, in particular the values of their exponents, are close to those reported in the literature for systems associated with self-organized criticality (SOC) such as forest-fire models; however, the typical assumptions of SOC need not apply. Our results demonstrate that power-law scalings in cluster size distributions are not restricted to systems for antagonistic interactions in which a clear separation of time-scales holds. The patterns are characteristic of processes of growth and inhibition in space, such as those in predator-prey and disturbance-recovery dynamics. Inversions of these patterns, that is, scalings with a positive slope as described for plankton distributions, would therefore require spatial forcing by environmental variability.

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“…But most of this theoretical work has ignored the potential interplay of temporal and spatial heterogeneity. There has also been little experimental exploration of the population dynamic consequences of the autocorrelation structure of environments (23,24). In this article we show theoretically and experimentally that in an open sink population autocorrelated fluctuations in habitat quality can increase average population size, even though such fluctuations enhance extinction risk in closed populations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

The inflationary effects of environmental fluctuations in source–sink systems

Gonzalez

Holt

2002

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

135

168

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Ecological communities are open to the immigration of individuals and are variable through time. In open habitats immigration may permit populations of a species to persist locally even though local biotic and abiotic processes tend to exclude such ''sink'' populations. A general model for a sink population reveals that autocorrelated environmental variation can dramatically inflate local abundance and that such populations display a characteristic ''outbreak'' pattern. An experimental protist microcosm exhibits these predicted effects. Because the many ecological and environmental processes that set the rate of exclusion are typically autocorrelated, these theoretical and empirical results have broad implications for our understanding of community structure and highlight a previously unsuspected potential effect of anthropogenic climate change.A n abiding theme in ecology is that local communities are restricted subsets of regional species pools (1). Because local communities are assembled by immigration and depleted by extinction, community structure may arise from patterns in the success and failure of population growth after immigration, driven either by interspecific interactions with resident community members, abiotic fluctuations in habitat quality through time, or some combination of the two (2). A growing body of theory and evidence suggests that spatial flows of individuals among habitats are essential for maintaining the long-term integrity of populations and communities (3, 4). One consequence of the movement of individuals into habitats that are either intrinsically low in quality or have strong resident competitors or predators is the creation of population ''sinks'' (5, 6). In a sink habitat, in the absence of immigration, populations suffer extinction because local births are insufficient to balance local mortality. The continued presence of such otherwise excluded species within a local assemblage depends on recurrent immigration from sources, a form of the ''rescue effect'' (7). But if habitat quality and hence local recruitment vary because of fluctuations in biotic or abiotic environmental variables, then sink populations may experience periods of net positive local growth. The local abundance of species in such habitats should thus reflect the interplay of immigration and temporal fluctuations within the habitat.One general property of environmental variation of particular importance for ecological dynamics is its autocorrelation structure, which defines the statistical dependency of successive values in a time series. In contrast to random fluctuations where successive values are statistically independent, autocorrelated fluctuations have a serial dependency. This property of environmental variability has been the focus of much recent study because (i) the environmental fluctuations of many physical variables (such as temperature and rainfall) are positively autocorrelated (8-10) and (ii) fluctuations of natural populations, which are often large in magnitude (11), are also often positivel...

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Environmental colour affects aspects of single–species population dynamics

Cited by 85 publications

References 51 publications

Poor environmental tracking can make extinction risk insensitive to the colour of environmental noise

Poor environmental tracking can make extinction risk insensitive to the colour of environmental noise

Cluster size distributions: signatures of self–organization in spatial ecologies

The inflationary effects of environmental fluctuations in source–sink systems

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