IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v420y2002i6912d10.1038_nature01064.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Synchronization of animal population dynamics by large-scale climate

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Post

    (The Pennsylvania State University)

  • Mads C. Forchhammer

    (University of Copenhagen)

Abstract

The hypothesis that animal population dynamics may be synchronized by climate1 is highly relevant in the context of climate change because it suggests that several populations might respond simultaneously to climatic trends if their dynamics are entrained by environmental correlation. The dynamics of many species throughout the Northern Hemisphere are influenced by a single large-scale climate system, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)2,3, which exerts highly correlated regional effects on local weather4. But efforts to attribute synchronous fluctuations of contiguous populations to large-scale climate are confounded by the synchronizing influences of dispersal or trophic interactions5. Here we report that the dynamics of caribou and musk oxen on opposite coasts of Greenland show spatial synchrony among populations of both species that correlates with the NAO index. Our analysis shows that the NAO has an influence in the high degree of cross-species synchrony between pairs of caribou and musk oxen populations separated by a minimum of 1,000 km of inland ice. The vast distances, and complete physical and ecological separation of these species, rule out spatial coupling by dispersal or interaction. These results indicate that animal populations of different species may respond synchronously to global climate change over large regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Post & Mads C. Forchhammer, 2002. "Synchronization of animal population dynamics by large-scale climate," Nature, Nature, vol. 420(6912), pages 168-171, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:420:y:2002:i:6912:d:10.1038_nature01064
    DOI: 10.1038/nature01064
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01064
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature01064?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Barbosa, A. Márcia & Real, Raimundo & Mario Vargas, J., 2009. "Transferability of environmental favourability models in geographic space: The case of the Iberian desman (Galemys pyrenaicus) in Portugal and Spain," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(5), pages 747-754.
    2. Lawrence W Sheppard & Emma J Defriez & Philip C Reid & Daniel C Reuman, 2019. "Synchrony is more than its top-down and climatic parts: interacting Moran effects on phytoplankton in British seas," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-25, March.
    3. Daniel K Gibson-Reinemer & Frank J Rahel, 2015. "Inconsistent Range Shifts within Species Highlight Idiosyncratic Responses to Climate Warming," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-15, July.
    4. Acevedo, Pelayo & Real, Raimundo, 2011. "Biogeographical differences between the two Capra pyrenaica subspecies, C. p. victoriae and C. p. hispanica, inhabiting the Iberian Peninsula: Implications for conservation," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(3), pages 814-823.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:420:y:2002:i:6912:d:10.1038_nature01064. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.