Campus Units
Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
2-2019
Journal or Book Title
Ecology Letters
Volume
22
Issue
2
First Page
342
Last Page
353
DOI
10.1111/ele.13195
Abstract
The current extinction and climate change crises pressure us to predict population dynamics with ever‐greater accuracy. Although predictions rest on the well‐advanced theory of age‐structured populations, two key issues remain poorly explored. Specifically, how the age‐dependency in demographic rates and the year‐to‐year interactions between survival and fecundity affect stochastic population growth rates. We use inference, simulations and mathematical derivations to explore how environmental perturbations determine population growth rates for populations with different age‐specific demographic rates and when ages are reduced to stages. We find that stage‐ vs. age‐based models can produce markedly divergent stochastic population growth rates. The differences are most pronounced when there are survival‐fecundity‐trade‐offs, which reduce the variance in the population growth rate. Finally, the expected value and variance of the stochastic growth rates of populations with different age‐specific demographic rates can diverge to the extent that, while some populations may thrive, others will inevitably go extinct.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Copyright Owner
The Authors
Copyright Date
2018
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Colchero, Fernando; Bronikowski, Anne M.; and et al., "The diversity of population responses to environmental change" (2019). Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology Publications. 337.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/eeob_ag_pubs/337
Included in
Climate Commons, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment Commons, Population Biology Commons
Comments
This article is published as Colchero, Fernando, Owen R. Jones, Dalia A. Conde, David Hodgson, Felix Zajitschek, Benedikt R. Schmidt, Aurelio F. Malo et al. "The diversity of population responses to environmental change." Ecology letters 22, no. 2 (2019): 342-353. doi: 10.1111/ele.13195.