Synchrony in metapopulations at multiple time scales: theory, experiments, and field data

Lead Research Organisation: Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science
Department Name: Sir Alister Hardy Found for Ocean Sci

Abstract

This is a subsidiary part of a joint proposal. Please see the main proposal with PI Daniel Reuman of Imperial College London.

Publications

10 25 50

publication icon
Beaugrand G (2019) Prediction of unprecedented biological shifts in the global ocean in Nature Climate Change

publication icon
Reid P (2012) Global synchrony of an accelerating rise in sea surface temperature in Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom

publication icon
Reuman DC (2017) Synchrony affects Taylor's law in theory and data. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

publication icon
Sheppard L (2017) Rapid surrogate testing of wavelet coherences in EPJ Nonlinear Biomedical Physics

publication icon
Zhao L (2019) Proximate determinants of Taylor's law slopes. in The Journal of animal ecology

 
Description Changes in plankton abundance, community composition and the distribution ranges of species to either side of the 1980s regime shift (a step change from one level to another) in the North Sea are well studied, but oscillatory aspect (synchrony) of their changes through time and space have not been investigated. The basic idea behind our research is that oscillations of the abundance of a species in a location are decomposed by the frequency they occur there at, and we obtain their strength and phase as a function of time and frequency. Our mathematical analyses, undertaken so far, indicate that there is considerable variability in synchrony between species and that the abundance of the plankton species examined does not affect their synchrony. Two species show similar patterns to temperature. A manuscript describing these results: "Climate change-related regime shifts have altered spatial synchrony of plankton dynamics in the North Sea", with Emma Defriez as first author,was published in 2016 in Global Change Biology.

A second paper with Lawrence Sheppard as first author and presented by him at the '9th conference of the European Study Group on Cardiovascular Oscillations' entitled 'Rapid surrogate testing of wavelet coherences' has been reviewed and is close to acceptance in 'EPJ - Nonlinear Biomedical Physics'. This paper has again used data from the Continuous Plankton Recorder.
Exploitation Route We expect that our work will prove of value 1) in contributing to understanding of the rate and scale of environmental and climate change 2) thorugh application to ecosystem and resource management of the seas around the UK and 3) by making available new tools that can be applied in marine and terrestrial ecology and medical science..
Sectors Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Education,Environment,Healthcare,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology

 
Description Our work is still at too early a stage for the findings to have been used as no papers have been published as yet.
First Year Of Impact 2010
Sector Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Education,Environment
Impact Types Societal,Economic