Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Population synchrony decreases with richness and increases with environmental fluctuations in an experimental metacommunity

  • Community ecology - Original research
  • Published:
Oecologia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Fluctuations of local but connected populations may show correlation or synchrony whenever they experience significant dispersal or correlated environmental biotic and abiotic variability. Synchrony may be an important variable in multispecies systems, but its nature and implications have not been explicitly examined. Because the number of locally coexisting species (richness) affects the population variability of community members, we manipulated richness under different regimes of environmental fluctuation (EF). We predicted that the temporal synchrony of populations in a species should decline with increasing richness of the metacommunity they live in. Additionally, we predicted that specialist species that are sensitive to a specific environmental factor would show higher synchronization when EF increases. We thus created experimental communities with varied richness, EF, and species specialization to examine the synchronizing effects of these factors on three aquatic invertebrate species. We created four levels of richness and three levels of EF by manipulating the salinity of the culture media. Monocultures exhibited higher population synchrony than metacommunities of 2–4 species. Furthermore, we found that species responded differently to EF treatments: high EF enhanced population synchrony for the specialist and intermediate species, but not for the generalist species. Our findings emphasize that the magnitude of EF and species richness both contribute to determine population synchrony, and importantly, our results suggest that biotic diversity may actually stabilize metacommunities by disrupting synchrony.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bai Y, Han X, Wu J, Chen Z, Li L (2004) Ecosystem stability and compensatory effects in the Inner Mongolia grassland. Nature 431:181–184

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bengtsson BE (1978) Use of harpacticoid copepods in toxicity tests. Mar Pollut Bull 9:238–241

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Benton TG, Lapsley CT, Beckerman AP (2001) Population synchrony and environmental variation: an experimental demonstration. Ecol Lett 4:236–243

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bjørnstad ON, Ims RA, Lambin X (1999) Spatial population dynamics: analysing patterns and proccess of population synchrony. Trends Ecol Evol 14:427–432

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Box GEP, Jenkins GM, Reinsel GC (1994) Time series analysis: forecasting and control. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs

  • Cottenie K (2005) Integrating environmental and spatial processes in ecological community dynamics. Ecol Lett 8:1175–1182

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Doak DF, Bigger D, Harding EK, Marvier MA, O’Malley RE, Thomson D (1998) The statistical inevitability of stability–diversity relationships in community ecology. Amer Nat 151:264–276

    Google Scholar 

  • Earn D, Levin SA, Rohani P (2000) Coherence and conservation. Science 290:1360–1364

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis AM, Lounibos LP, Holyoak M (2006) Evaluating the long-term metacommunity dynamics of tree hole mosquitoes. Ecology 10:2582–2590

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fontaine C, Gonzalez A (2005) Population synchrony induced by resource fluctuations and dispersal in an aquatic microcosm. Ecology 86:1463–1471

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gouhier TC, Guichard F, Gonzalez A (2010) Synchrony and stability of food webs in metacommunities. Amer Nat 175:E16–E34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenman JV, Benton TG (2001) The impact of stochasticity on nonlinear population models: synchrony and the Moran effect. Oikos 93:343–351

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grenfell BT, Wilson K, Finkenstädt BF, Clutton Brock TH, Crawley MJ (1998) Noise and determinism in synchronized sheep dynamics. Nature 394:674–677

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Grenfell BT, Wilson K, Finkenstädt BF, Clutton Brock TH, Crawley MJ (2000) Ecology—nonlinearity and the Moran effect. Nature 406:847

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Heino M, Kaitala V, Ranta E, Lindström J (1997) Synchronous dynamics and rates of extinction in spatially structured populations. Proc R Soc Lond B 264:481–486

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holyoak M, Leibold MA, Holt RD (2005) Metacommunities: spatial dynamics and ecological communities. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  • Hudson OJ, Cattadori IM (1999) The Moran effect: a cause of population synchrony. Trends Ecol Evol 14:1–2

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ims RA, Andreassen HP (2000) Spatial synchronization of vole population dynamics by predatory birds. Nature 408:194–197

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ives AR (1995) Predicting the response of populations to environmental change. Ecology 76:926–941

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jiang L, Zhichao P (2009) Different effects of species diversity on temporal stability in single trophic and multitrophic communities. Amer Nat 174:651–659

    Google Scholar 

  • Jorgensen J, Rossignol A, Puccia C, Levins R (2000) On the variance of eigenvalues of the community matrix: derivation and appraisal. Ecology 81:2928–2931

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keitt TH (2008) Coherent ecological dynamics induced by large scale disturbance. Nature 454:331–334

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kirkpatrick M (2009) Patterns of quantitative genetic variation in multiple dimensions. Genetica 136:271–284

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Koelle K, Vandermeer J (2005) Dispersal-induced desynchronization: from metapopulations to metacommunities. Ecol Lett 8:175–176

    Google Scholar 

  • Kolasa J, Drake JA, Huxel GR, Hewitt CL (1996) Hierarchy underlies patterns of variability in species inhabiting natural microcosms. OIKOS 77:259–266

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leibold MA, Holyoak M, Mouquet M, Amarasekare P, Chase JM, Hoopes MF, Holt RD, Shurin JB, Law R, Tilman D, Loreau M, Gonzalez A (2004) The metacommunity concept: a framework for multi-scale community ecology. Ecol Lett 7:601–613

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liebhold AD, Koenig WD, Bjørnstand ON (2004) Spatial synchrony in population dynamics. Ann Rev Ecol Evol Syst 35:467–490

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Loreau M, de Mazancourt C (2008) Species synchrony and its drivers: neutral and non neutral community dynamics in fluctuating environments. Amer Nat 172:E48–E66

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCann KS (2000) The diversity–stability debate. Nature 405:223–228

    Google Scholar 

  • Melbourne BA, Hastings A (2008) Extinction risk depends strongly on factors contributing to stochasticity. Nature 454:100–103

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Moran PAP (1953) The statistical analysis of the Canadian lynx cycle. II. Synchronization and meteorology. Austral J Zool 1:291–298

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Naeem S, Li S (1997) Biodiversity enhances ecosystem reliability. Nature 390:507–509

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Pandit SN, Kolasa J (2012) Opposite effects of environmental variability and species richness on temporal turnover of species in a complex habitat mosaic. Hydrobiologia 685:145–154

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pandit SN, Kolasa J, Cottenie K (2009) Contrasts between habitat generalists and specialists—an empirical extension to the basic metacommunity framework. Ecology 90:2253–2262

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Paradis E, Baillie SR, Sutherland WJ, Gregory RD (2000) Spatial synchrony in populations of birds: effects of habitat, population trend, and spatial scale. Ecology 81:2112–2125

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ranta E, Kaitala K, Lindstrom J, Helle H (1997a) The Moran effect and synchrony in population dynamics. Oikos 78:136–142

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ranta E, Kaitala K, Lindstrom J (1997b) External disturbances and population dynamics. Ann Zool Fennici 34:127–132

    Google Scholar 

  • Ranta E, Lundberg P, Kaitala V (2006) Ecology of populations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Reed DH (2008) Effects of population size on population variability: from mutation to environmental catastrophes. In: Carroll SP, Fox CW (eds) Conservation biology: evaluation in action. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 16–34

  • Ripa J (2000) Analyzing the Moran effect and dispersal: their significance and interaction in synchronous population dynamics. Oikos 89:175–187

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rooney N, McCann K, Gellner G, Moore JC (2006) Structural asymmetry and the stability of diverse food webs. Nature 442:265–269

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Royama T (2005) Moran effect on nonlinear population process. Ecol Monogr 75:277–293

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Teng J, McCann KS (2004) Dynamics of compartmented and reticulate food webs. Am Nat 164:86–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Underwood AJ (1997) Experiments in ecology: their logical design and interpretation using analysis of variance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  • Vasseur DA, Fox JW (2007) Environmental fluctuations can stabilize food web dynamics by increasing synchrony. Ecol Lett 10:1066–1074

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vasseur DA, Fox JW (2009) Phase-locking and environmental fluctuations generate synchrony in a predator–prey community. Nature 460:1007–1010

    Google Scholar 

  • Verhoeven KJF, Simonsen KL, McIntyre LM (2005) Implementing false discovery rate control: increasing your power. Oikos 108:643–647

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weber CI (ed)(1993) Methods for measuring the acute toxicity of effluents and receiving waters to freshwater and marine organisms (US EPA/600/4–90/027F). US EPA, Washington, DC

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a NSERC operating grant to JK. We thank Dr. A. Hayward for suggestions to improve the experimental design and Dr. D. Vasseur for insightful comments on the manuscript. The authors are grateful to three anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Dr. Pedro Peres-Neto for his valuable suggestions on some of the analysis in the study.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Shubha N. Pandit

    Present address: Département des Sciences Biologiques, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), CP 8888, Succ. Centre Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3P8, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. West, Hamilton, ON, L8S4K1, Canada

    Shubha N. Pandit & Jurek Kolasa

  2. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, N1G2W1, Canada

    Karl Cottenie

Authors
  1. Shubha N. Pandit
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jurek Kolasa
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Karl Cottenie
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shubha N. Pandit.

Additional information

Communicated by Elena Litchman.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOC 2869 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pandit, S.N., Kolasa, J. & Cottenie, K. Population synchrony decreases with richness and increases with environmental fluctuations in an experimental metacommunity. Oecologia 171, 237–247 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2407-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2407-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation