Biological responses to environmental forcing: the linear tracking window hypothesis

Determining the relative contributions of intrinsic and extrinsic processes to the regulation of biological populations has been a recurrent ecological issue. Recent discussions concerning ecosystem "regim shifts" again raise the question of whether population fluctuations are mainly contr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology (Durham) 2006-08, Vol.87 (8), p.1932-1938
Main Authors: Hsieh, C.H, Ohman, M.D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Animals
aquatic organisms
Biological and medical sciences
Climate change
Copepoda
Correlation analysis
Diatoms
Dinoflagellida
Ecology
ecosystem shifts
Ecosystems
Environment
environmental factors
environmental forcing
Euphausiacea
Fishes
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
generation time
Hypotheses
linear tracking
Marine ecology
Marine ecosystems
Marine fishes
Models, Statistical
nonlinear responses
Nonlinearity
North Sea
Pacific Ocean
Phytoplankton
Population Dynamics
Population ecology
Population growth
statistical analysis
Synecology
Time Factors
Time series
time series analysis
Time series forecasting
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Summary:Determining the relative contributions of intrinsic and extrinsic processes to the regulation of biological populations has been a recurrent ecological issue. Recent discussions concerning ecosystem "regim shifts" again raise the question of whether population fluctuations are mainly controlled by external forcing. Results of nonlinear time series analyses indicate that pelagic populations typically do not passively track stochastic environmental variables. Rather, population dynamics are better described as nonlinear amplification of physical forcing by biological interactions. However, we illustrate that in some cases populations do show linear tracking of the physical environment. To explain why population dynamics can sometimes be linear, we propose the linear tracking window hypothesis: populations are most likely to track the stochastic environmental forcing when their generation time matches the characteristic time scale of the environmental signal. While our observations follow this hypothesis well, our results indicate that the linear tracking window is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.
ISSN:0012-9658
1939-9170
DOI:10.1890/0012-9658(2006)87[1932:BRTEFT]2.0.CO;2