A comparison of terrestrial and marine ecological systems

Steele, John H.

doi:10.1038/313355a0

Cited by 499 publications

(384 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Many environments have a red spectrum [2,3], which implies that white environmental noise is typically not a good null-model [1]. Notwithstanding, most population viability analyses on threatened species still explicitly or implicitly assume a white environment [59], which has led to assertions that this might produce excessively optimistic assessments of population viability [1,15,21].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Poor environmental tracking can make extinction risk insensitive to the colour of environmental noise

et al. 2011

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The relative importance of environmental colour for extinction risk compared with other aspects of environmental noise (mean and interannual variability) is poorly understood. Such knowledge is currently relevant, as climate change can cause the mean, variability and temporal autocorrelation of environmental variables to change. Here, we predict that the extinction risk of a shorebird population increases with the colour of a key environmental variable: winter temperature. However, the effect is weak compared with the impact of changes in the mean and interannual variability of temperature. Extinction risk was largely insensitive to noise colour, because demographic rates are poor in tracking the colour of the environment. We show that three mechanisms-which probably act in many species-can cause poor environmental tracking: (i) demographic rates that depend nonlinearly on environmental variables filter the noise colour, (ii) demographic rates typically depend on several environmental signals that do not change colour synchronously, and (iii) demographic stochasticity whitens the colour of demographic rates at low population size. We argue that the common practice of assuming perfect environmental tracking may result in overemphasizing the importance of noise colour for extinction risk. Consequently, ignoring environmental autocorrelation in population viability analysis could be less problematic than generally thought.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many abiotic environmental variables, such as temperature, are temporally autocorrelated (often showing a reddened spectrum [2,3]). Biotic environmental variables, such as resource or prey abundance, are also likely to have coloured noise properties, as many time-series of population size exhibit temporal autocorrelation [4,5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Poor environmental tracking can make extinction risk insensitive to the colour of environmental noise

et al. 2011

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“…Aleyev 1977;Steele 1985;Okubo 1987;Vogel 1988Vogel , 1994Denny 1993) have employed quantitative comparative methods to clarify how fluids affect form and function of living things in diverse freshwater, marine and terrestrial habitats. All organisms are challenged physically when moving through, moving with or staying stationary in fluids with suites of different properties.…”

Section: Preamblementioning

confidence: 99%

A biophysical perspective on dispersal and the geography of evolution in marine and terrestrial systems

Dawson

Hamner

2007

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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The fluid mechanics of marine and terrestrial systems are surprisingly similar at many spatial and temporal scales. Not surprisingly, the dispersal of organisms that float, swim or fly is influenced by the fluid environments of air and seawater. Nonetheless, it has been argued repeatedly that the geography of evolution differs fundamentally between marine and terrestrial taxa. Might this view emanate from qualitative contrasts between the pelagic ocean and terrestrial land conflated by anthropocentric perception of within-and betweenrealm variation? We draw on recent advances in biogeography to identify two pairs of biophysically similar marine and terrestrial settings-(i) aerial and marine microplankton and (ii) true islands and brackish seawater lakes-which have similar geographies of evolution. Commonalities at these scales, the largest and smallest biogeographic scales, delimit the geographical extents that can possibly characterize evolution in the remaining majority of species. The geographies of evolution therefore differ statistically, not fundamentally, between marine and terrestrial systems. Comparing the geography of evolution in diverse non-microplanktonic and non-island species from a biophysical perspective is an essential next step for quantifying precisely how marine and terrestrial systems differ and is an important yet under-explored avenue of macroecology.

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“…First, we allow for temporally correlated random environments. There has been a growing recognition amongst ecologists of the importance of long-term correlations in environmental time series (Steele 1985, Halley 1996, Vasseur and Yodzis 2004. These correlations can influence extinction risk (Lawton 1988, Petchey et al 1997, Cuddington and Yodzis 1999, Heino et al 2000, inflate population abundances Holt 2002, Holt et al 2003), and facilitate persistence of couple sink populations (Roy et al 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%