Modelling non-additive and nonlinear signals from climatic noise in ecological time series: Soay sheep as an example

Nils Chr Stenseth; Kung-Sik Chan; Giacomo Tavecchia; Tim Coulson; Atle Mysterud; Tim Clutton-Brock; Bryan Grenfell

doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2794

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Modelling non-additive and nonlinear signals from climatic noise in ecological time series: Soay sheep as an example

Journal article

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Modelling non-additive and nonlinear signals from climatic noise in ecological time series: Soay sheep as an example

Nils Chr Stenseth, Kung-Sik Chan, Giacomo Tavecchia, Tim Coulson, Atle Mysterud, Tim Clutton-Brock and Bryan Grenfell

Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences, Vol.271(1552), pp.1985-1993

10/07/2004

DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2794

PMCID: PMC1691829

PMID: 15451687

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Abstract

Understanding how climate can interact with other factors in determining patterns of species abundance is a persistent challenge in ecology. Recent research has suggested that the dynamics exhibited by some populations may be a non-additive function of climate, with climate affecting population growth more strongly at high density than at low density. However, we lack methodologies to adequately explain patterns in population growth generated as a result of interactions between intrinsic factors and extrinsic climatic variation in non-linear systems. We present a novel method (the Functional Coefficient Threshold Auto-Regressive (FCTAR) method) that can identify interacting influences of climate and density on population dynamics from time-series data. We demonstrate its use on count data on the size of the Soay sheep population, which is known to exhibit dynamics generated by nonlinear and non-additive interactions between density and climate, living on Hirta in the St Kilda archipelago. The FCTAR method suggests that climate fluctuations can drive the Soay sheep population between different dynamical regimes-from stable population size through limit cycles and non-periodic fluctuations.

climate effects

density dependence

population cycles

Soay sheep (Ovis aries)

time-series analysis

Details

Title: Subtitle: Modelling non-additive and nonlinear signals from climatic noise in ecological time series: Soay sheep as an example
Creators: Nils Chr Stenseth - University of Oslo
Kung-Sik Chan - University of Iowa
Giacomo Tavecchia - University of Cambridge
Tim Coulson - Imperial College London
Atle Mysterud - University of Oslo
Tim Clutton-Brock - University of Cambridge
Bryan Grenfell - University of Cambridge
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences, Vol.271(1552), pp.1985-1993
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2794
PMID: 15451687
PMCID: PMC1691829
NLM abbreviation: Proc Biol Sci
ISSN: 0962-8452
eISSN: 1471-2954
Publisher: The Royal Society
Language: English
Date published: 10/07/2004
Academic Unit: Statistics and Actuarial Science; Radiology
Record Identifier: 9984257734502771

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