Dispersal, Environmental Correlation, and Spatial Synchrony in Population Dynamics

Many species exhibit widespread spatial synchrony in population fluctuations. This pattern is of great ecological interest and can be a source of concern when the species is rare or endangered. Both dispersal and spatial correlations in the environment have been implicated as possible causes of this...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Kendall, Bruce E., Bjørnstad, Ottar N., Bascompte, Jordi, Keitt, Timothy H., Fagan, William F.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2000
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:dnet:digitalcsic_::e3cc2b3d0b9ba14972626df93fe38f3b
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/44290
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Coupled patch model
Dispersal
environmental correlation
Moran effect
spatial synchrony
Descripción
Sumario:Many species exhibit widespread spatial synchrony in population fluctuations. This pattern is of great ecological interest and can be a source of concern when the species is rare or endangered. Both dispersal and spatial correlations in the environment have been implicated as possible causes of this pattern, but these two factors have rarely been studied in combination. We develop a spatially structured population model, simple enough to obtain analytic so- lutions for the population correlation, that incorporates both dis- persal and environmental correlation. We ask whether these two synchronizing factors contribute additively to the total spatial pop- ulation covariance. We find that there is always an interaction be- tween these two factors and that this interaction is small only when one or both of the environmental correlation and the dispersal rate are small. The interaction is opposite in sign to the environmental correlation; so, in the normal case of positive environmental cor- relation across sites, the population synchrony will be lower than predicted by simply adding the effects of dispersal and environmental correlation. We also find that population synchrony declines as the strength of population regulation increases. These results indicate that dispersal and environmental correlation need to be considered in combination as explanations for observed patterns of population synchrony.