How phenological (a-)synchrony can alter consumer-resource dynamics

Frithjof Lutscher (University of Ottawa)

Thursday 30th April 14:00-15:00
Maths 311B

Abstract

The dynamics of a consumer and its resource depend on how strongly the
two interact, which, in turn, depends on the relative timing of their
respective life cycles (phenology). There is clear empirical evidence
that climate change alters the timing of important life-cycle events,
such as flowering or hibernation, but less so about the consequences of
this change for the dynamics of the species involved. We studied a
semi-discrete  dynamical system model for one or more specialist
consumers and their resource. Consumers reproduce only once per year,
resources continuously during their growing season. Each species has
its own winter resting period, during which it does not interact with
the other.  Such a situation is quite common in plant-herbivore
systems. We say that two species are in phenological synchrony when
their resting and growing seasons are perfectly aligned. We used this
model to explore various questions, from the long-standing challenge of
how several consumer species can coexist on a single resource, to
recent ones such as how climate change will affect the community
composition of competing consumers via changes in season length and
synchrony. We also study whether and under which conditions synchrony
between a consumer and its resource is beneficial to the consumer. We
thereby reconcile the old theoretical tenet that perfect synchrony
should be best for the consumer with newer simulation results that some
level of asynchrony is better.

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