Explaining why fluctuations in abundances of spatially disjunct populations often are correlated through time is a major goal of population ecologists. We address two hypotheses receiving little to no testing in wild populations: a) that population cycling facilitates synchronization given weak coupling among populations, and b) that the ability of periodic external forces to synchronize oscillating populations is a function of the mismatch in timescales (detuning) between the force and the population. Here, we apply new analytical methods to field survey data on gypsy moth outbreaks. We report that at timescales associated with gypsy moth outbreaks, spatial synchrony increased with population periodicity via phase locking. The extent to which synchrony in temperature and precipitation influenced population synchrony was associated with the degree of mismatch in dominant timescales of oscillation. Our study provides new empirical methods and rare empirical evidence that population cycling and low detuning can promote population spatial synchrony.
Defoliation Data
The data are the annual proportion of land area defoliated by gypsy moths across the Northeastern United States for 1990-2015. Defoliation was mapped with aerial surveys conducted by each state. Frequency of defoliation (0/1) in 1 × 1 km rasters was aggregated into 8 × 8 km grid cells. The data are limited to 1,327 focal grid cells in which defoliation was detected in 4 or more years both in the focal grid cell and at least 1 of the 8 nearest neighbour grid cells. The column headings “xcoord” and “ycoord” are coordinates expressed in meters based on the NAD 1983 Albers Projection, Central Meridian > -96, Standard Parallel 1 = 20, Standard Parallel 2 = 60, Latitude Of Origin = 40 and Datum = D North American 1983. The remaining columns are years 1990-2015.
PRISM weather data
This file contains weather data derived from the the PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University (http://prism.oregonstate.edu), spatially referenced within 8 × 8 km grid cells. The cells in this data are limited to 1,327 focal grid cells in which gypsy moth defoliation was detected in 4 or more years both in the focal grid cell and at least 1 of the 8 nearest neighbour grid cells. The first set of columns are weather variables abbreviated as “tmax” (mean maximum temperature, “tmin” = mean minimum temperature, and “ppt” = precipitation. The month for weather variable is given as 01-12 (January – December). Temperature is in units of degrees Celsius and precipitation is in millimeters. The column headings “xcoord” and “ycoord” are coordinates expressed in meters based on the NAD 1983 Albers Projection, Central Meridian > -96, Standard Parallel 1 = 20, Standard Parallel 2 = 60, Latitude Of Origin = 40 and Datum = D North American 1983. The remaining columns are years 1990-2015.
R code for wavelet_ncLISA function
Code by Jonathan Walter, borrowing from Ottar Bjornstad's 'ncf' package, with dependencies on Dan Reuman's 'wsyn' package for measuring local cross-wavelet synchrony.
R Code localPhaseSynch_pairwise function
Code by Jonathan Walter, borrowing from Ottar Bjornstad's 'ncf' package, with dependencies on Dan Reuman's 'wsyn' package and the 'circular' package for measuring local phase synchrony.