Community extinction patterns in coloured environments.

ABSTRACT: Understanding community responses to environmental variation is a fundamental aspect of ecological research, with direct ecological, conservation and economic implications. Here, we examined the role of the magnitude, correlation and autocorrelation structures of environmental variation on species' extinction risk (ER), and the probability of actual extinction events in model competitive communities. Both ER and probability increased with increasing positive autocorrelation when species responded independently to the environment, yet both decreased with a strong correlation between species-specific responses. These results are framed in terms of the synchrony between--and magnitude of variation within--species population sizes and are explained in terms of differences in noise amplificatio

SUBMITTER: Ruokolainen L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2588465 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature