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Scaling of the mean and variance of population dynamics under fluctuating regimes

På svenska

Author

  • Cino Pertoldi
  • S. Faurby
  • D. H. Reed
  • J. Knape
  • M. Bjorklund
  • Per Lundberg
  • V. Kaitala
  • V. Loeschcke
  • L. A. Bach

Summary, in English

Theoretical ecologists have long sought to understand how the persistence of populations depends on the interactions between exogenous (biotic and abiotic) and endogenous (e.g., demographic and genetic) drivers of population dynamics. Recent work focuses on the autocorrelation structure of environmental perturbations and its effects on the persistence of populations. Accurate estimation of extinction times and especially determination of the mechanisms affecting extinction times is important for biodiversity conservation. Here we examine the interaction between environmental fluctuations and the scaling effect of the mean population size with its variance. We investigate how interactions between environmental and demographic stochasticity can affect the mean time to extinction, change optimal patch size dynamics, and how it can alter the often-assumed linear relationship between the census size and the effective population size. The importance of the correlation between environmental and demographic variation depends on the relative importance of the two types of variation. We found the correlation to be important when the two types of variation were approximately equal; however, the importance of the correlation diminishes as one source of variation dominates. The implications of these findings are discussed from a conservation and eco-evolutionary point of view.

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

165-173

Publication/Series

Theory in Biosciences

Volume

133

Issue

3-4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Biological Sciences

Keywords

  • Environmental variability
  • Effective population size
  • Extinction
  • Scaling effect
  • Temporal autocorrelations in the environment

Status

Published

Research group

  • Theoretical Population Ecology and Evolution Group

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1431-7613