Biomedical subjects

Timothy H Keitt

Publications and source records attributed to Timothy H Keitt.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Detection of scale-specific community dynamics using wavelets.

The response of ecological communities to anthropogenic disturbance is of both scientific and practical interest. Communities where all species respond to disturbance in a similar fashion (synchrony) will exhibit large fluctuations in total biomass and dramatic changes in ecosystem function. Communities where some species increase in abundance while others decrease after disturbance (compensation) can maintain total biomass and ecosystem function in the face of anthropogenic change. We examined dynamics of the Little Rock Lake (Wisconsin, USA) zooplankton community in the context of an experimental pH manipulation conducted in one basin of the lake. A novel application of wavelets was used to partition patterns of synchrony and compensation by time scale. We find interestingly that some time series show both patterns of synchrony and compensation depending on the scale of analysis. Within the unmanipulated basin, we found subtle patterns of synchrony and compensation within the community, largely at a one-year time scale corresponding to seasonal variation. Within the acidified lake basin, dynamics shifted to longer time scales corresponding to the pattern of pH manipulation. Comparisons between pairs of species in different functional groups showed both strong compensatory and synchronous responses to disturbance. The strongest compensatory signal was observed for two species of Daphnia whose life history traits lead to synchrony at annual time scales, but whose differential sensitivity to acidification led to compensation at multiannual time scales. The separation of time scales inherent in the wavelet method greatly facilitated interpretation as patterns resulting from seasonal drivers could be separated from patterns driven by pH manipulation.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Scaling in the growth of geographically subdivided populations: invariant patterns from a continent-wide biological survey.

We consider statistical patterns of variation in growth rates for over 400 species of breeding birds across North America surveyed from 1966 to 1998. We report two results. First, the standard deviation of population growth rates decays as a power-law function of total population size with an exponent beta = 0.36 +/- 0.02. Second, the number of subpopulations, measured as the number of survey locations with non-zero counts, scales to the 3/4 power of total number of birds counted in a given species. We show how these patterns may be related, and discuss a simple stochastic growth model for a geographically subdivided population that formalizes the relationship. We also examine reasons that may explain why some species deviate from these scaling laws.

Animals↗

PubMed2000

Dispersal, Environmental Correlation, and Spatial Synchrony in Population Dynamics.

Many species exhibit widespread spatial synchrony in population fluctuations. This pattern is of great ecological interest and can be a source of concern when the species is rare or endangered. Both dispersal and spatial correlations in the environment have been implicated as possible causes of this pattern, but these two factors have rarely been studied in combination. We develop a spatially structured population model, simple enough to obtain analytic solutions for the population correlation, that incorporates both dispersal and environmental correlation. We ask whether these two synchronizing factors contribute additively to the total spatial population covariance. We find that there is always an interaction between these two factors and that this interaction is small only when one or both of the environmental correlation and the dispersal rate are small. The interaction is opposite in sign to the environmental correlation; so, in the normal case of positive environmental correlation across sites, the population synchrony will be lower than predicted by simply adding the effects of dispersal and environmental correlation. We also find that population synchrony declines as the strength of population regulation increases. These results indicate that dispersal and environmental correlation need to be considered in combination as explanations for observed patterns of population synchrony.

Moran effect↗