Gudmundson Sara, Eklöf Anna, Wennergren Uno
Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Division of Theoretical Biology, Linköping University, Linköping 581 83, Sweden.
Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Division of Theoretical Biology, Linköping University, Linköping 581 83, Sweden
Proc Biol Sci. 2015 Aug 7;282(1812):20151126. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.1126.
How species respond to changes in environmental variability has been shown for single species, but the question remains whether these results are transferable to species when incorporated in ecological communities. Here, we address this issue by analysing the same species exposed to a range of environmental variabilities when (i) isolated or (ii) embedded in a food web. We find that all species in food webs exposed to temporally uncorrelated environments (white noise) show the same type of dynamics as isolated species, whereas species in food webs exposed to positively autocorrelated environments (red noise) can respond completely differently compared with isolated species. This is owing to species following their equilibrium densities in a positively autocorrelated environment that in turn enables species-species interactions to come into play. Our results give new insights into species' response to environmental variation. They especially highlight the importance of considering both species' interactions and environmental autocorrelation when studying population dynamics in a fluctuating environment.
单个物种对环境变异性变化的响应已有研究，但问题在于，当这些物种纳入生态群落时，这些结果是否可推广至其他物种。在此，我们通过分析同一物种在以下两种情况下暴露于一系列环境变异性时的情况来解决这个问题：（i）孤立状态或（ii）嵌入食物网中。我们发现，处于时间上不相关环境（白噪声）中的食物网中的所有物种都表现出与孤立物种相同类型的动态，而处于正自相关环境（红噪声）中的食物网中的物种与孤立物种相比，其反应可能完全不同。这是因为在正自相关环境中，物种遵循其平衡密度，进而使物种间相互作用得以发挥作用。我们的结果为物种对环境变化的响应提供了新的见解。它们特别强调了在波动环境中研究种群动态时，考虑物种间相互作用和环境自相关的重要性。
