Environmental variability uncovers disruptive effects of species' interactions on population dynamics.

ABSTRACT: 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 tur

SUBMITTER: Gudmundson S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4528527 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature