Ecological Monographs最新文献

{"title":"Novel analytic methods for predicting extinctions in ecological networks","authors":"Chris Jones,&nbsp;Damaris Zurell,&nbsp;Karoline Wiesner","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1601","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1601","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ecological networks describe the interactions between different species, informing us how they rely on one another for food, pollination, and survival. If a species in an ecosystem is under threat of extinction, it can affect other species in the system and possibly result in their secondary extinction as well. Understanding how (primary) extinctions cause secondary extinctions on ecological networks has been considered previously using computational methods. However, these methods do not provide an explanation for the properties that make ecological networks robust, and they can be computationally expensive. We develop a new analytic model for predicting secondary extinctions that requires no stochastic simulation. Our model can predict secondary extinctions when primary extinctions occur at random or due to some targeting based on the number of links per species or risk of extinction, and can be applied to an ecological network of any number of layers. Using our model, we consider how false negatives and positives in network data affect predictions for network robustness. We have also extended the model to predict scenarios in which secondary extinctions occur once species lose a certain percentage of interaction strength, and to model the loss of interactions as opposed to just species extinction. From our model, it is possible to derive new analytic results such as how ecological networks are most robust when secondary species are of equal degree. Additionally, we show that both specialization and generalization in the distribution of interaction strength can be advantageous for network robustness, depending upon the extinction scenario being considered.</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecm.1601","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140124086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social foraging and the associated benefits of group-living in Cliff Swallows decrease over 40 years","authors":"Charles R. Brown,&nbsp;Mary B. Brown,&nbsp;Stacey L. Hannebaum,&nbsp;Gigi S. Wagnon,&nbsp;Olivia M. Pletcher,&nbsp;Catherine E. Page,&nbsp;Amy C. West,&nbsp;Valerie A. O'Brien","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1602","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1602","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Animals that feed socially can sometimes better locate prey, often by transferring information about food that is patchy, dense, and temporally and spatially unpredictable. Information transfer is a potential benefit of living in breeding colonies where unsuccessful foragers can more readily locate successful ones and thereby improve feeding efficiency. Most studies on social foraging have been short term, and how long-term environmental change affects both foraging strategies and the associated benefits of coloniality is generally unknown. In the colonial Cliff Swallow (<i>Petrochelidon pyrrhonota</i>), we examined how social foraging, information transfer, and feeding ecology changed over a 40-year period in western Nebraska. Relative to the 1980s, Cliff Swallows in 2016–2022 were more likely to forage solitarily or in smaller groups, spent less time foraging, were more successful as solitaries, fed in more variable locations, and engaged less in information transfer at the colony site. The total mass of insects brought back to nestlings per parental visit declined over the study. The diversity of insect families captured increased over time, and some insect taxa dropped out of the diet, although the three most common insect families remained the same over the decades. Nestling Cliff Swallow body mass at 10 days of age and the number of nestlings surviving per nest declined more sharply with colony size in 2015–2022 than in 1984–1991 at sites where the confounding effects of ectoparasites were removed. Adult body mass during the provisioning of nestlings was lower in more recent years, but the change did not vary with colony size. The reason(s) for the reduction in social foraging and information transfer over time is unclear, but the consequence is that colonial nesting may no longer offer the same fitness advantages for Cliff Swallows as in the 1980s. The results illustrate the flexibility of foraging behavior and dynamic shifts in the potential selective pressures for group living.</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140104706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A general, resource-based explanation for density dependence in populations of large herbivores","authors":"N. Thompson Hobbs","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1600","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1600","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The discipline of ecology seeks to understand how ecosystems, communities, and populations are regulated. A ubiquitous mechanism of population regulation of consumers is that capturing energy and nutrients in sufficient quantities for survival and reproduction becomes more difficult as population density increases. Extensive evidence has revealed that populations of large herbivores are often regulated by density dependence, defined as the reduction in the per-capita population growth rate that occurs as populations grow large. Diminished body mass of individuals has been repeatedly observed in high-density populations, implicating compromised nutrition as the primary cause of density dependence. However, there is no general explanation for why these nutritional deficiencies occur. Recent work demonstrated that reduced food intake rates resulting from the functional response of herbivores to depleted plant biomass does not provide a sensible explanation for density dependence because rates of food intake of herbivores are often insensitive to changes in plant biomass. A new model of feedbacks from plant biomass to herbivores shows how reduced nutrition of herbivores can result from increased dilution of nutrients in the plant tissue they consume as populations grow, even when their rate of consumption of plants remains constant. The model contains parameters that can be scaled to body mass, allowing unusually general predictions. The model shows that convex, concave, and linear relationships between the per-capita growth rate and population density can arise from the effects of depletion of plant biomass by herbivore foraging. The model is the first to explicitly include spatial variance in the nutritional quality of plants as a general driver of herbivore population dynamics. I show how regulation of herbivore abundance by plant nutrients can occur, even when a large fraction of the consumable plant biomass remains uneaten, providing a simple, mechanistic explanation for bottom-up control of population dynamics of primary consumers in a “green world.”</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecm.1600","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140043439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Environmental variation structures reproduction and recruitment in long-lived mega-herbivores: Galapagos giant tortoises","authors":"Stephen Blake,&nbsp;Freddy Cabrera,&nbsp;Sebastian Cruz,&nbsp;Diego Ellis-Soto,&nbsp;Charles B. Yackulic,&nbsp;Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau,&nbsp;Martin Wikelski,&nbsp;Franz Kuemmeth,&nbsp;James P. Gibbs,&nbsp;Sharon L. Deem","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1599","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1599","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Migratory, long-lived animals are an important focus for life-history theory because they manifest extreme trade-offs in life-history traits: delayed maturity, low fecundity, variable recruitment rates, long generation times, and vital rates that respond to variation across environments. Galapagos tortoises are an iconic example: they are long-lived, migrate seasonally, face multiple anthropogenic threats, and have cryptic early life-history stages for which vital rates are unknown. From 2012 to 2021, we studied the reproductive ecology of two species of Galapagos tortoises (<i>Chelonoidis porteri</i> and <i>C. donfaustoi</i>) along elevation gradients that coincided with substantial changes in climate and vegetation productivity. Specifically, we (1) measured the body and reproductive condition of 166 adult females, (2) tracked the movements of 33 adult females using global positioning system telemetry, and monitored their body condition seasonally, (3) recorded nest temperatures, clutch characteristics, and egg survival from 107 nests, and (4) used radiotelemetry to monitor growth, survival, and movements of 104 hatchlings. We also monitored temperature and rainfall from field sites, and remotely sensed primary productivity along the elevation gradient. Our study showed that environmental variability, mediated by elevation, influenced vital rates of giant tortoises, specifically egg production by adult females and juvenile recruitment. Adult females were either elevational migrants or year-round lowland residents. Migrants had higher body condition than residents, and body condition was positively correlated with the probability of being gravid. Nests occurred in the hottest, driest parts of the tortoise's range, between 6 and 165 m elevation. Clutch size increased with elevation, whereas egg survival decreased. Hatchling survival and growth were highest at intermediate elevations. Hatchlings dispersed rapidly to 100–750 m from their nests before becoming sedentary (ranging over &lt;0.2 ha). Predicted future climates may impact the relationships between elevation and vital rates of Galapagos tortoises and other species living across elevation gradients. Resilience will be maximized by ensuring the connectivity of foraging and reproductive areas within the current and possible future elevational ranges of these species.</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecm.1599","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139739629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does restoring apex predators to food webs restore ecosystems? Large carnivores in Yellowstone as a model system","authors":"N. Thompson Hobbs,&nbsp;Danielle B. Johnston,&nbsp;Kristin N. Marshall,&nbsp;Evan C. Wolf,&nbsp;David J. Cooper","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1598","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1598","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Modification of food webs is a frequent cause of shifts in ecosystem states that resist reversal when the food web is restored to its original condition. We used the restoration of the large carnivore guild including gray wolves (<i>Canis lupis</i>), cougars (<i>Felis concolor</i>), and grizzly bears (<i>Ursus arctos horribilis</i>) to the northern range of Yellowstone National Park as a model system to understand how ecosystems might resist reconfiguration after the restoration of apex predators to the food web. The absence of wolves, cougars, and grizzly bears for nearly a century from the northern range was the primary cause of dramatic changes in riparian plant communities. Willows (<i>Salix</i> spp.) were suppressed in height by intense browsing by the dominant herbivore, elk (<i>Cervus canadensis</i>). The loss of activity by beavers (<i>Castor canadensis</i>) coincided with the loss of tall willows. We hypothesized that intense elk browsing interrupted the mutualism between willow and beavers: ecosystem engineering by beavers was a critical component of willow habitat and tall willows were a critical component of habitat for beavers. This interruption made riparian communities resilient to the disturbance caused by the restoration of apex predators. We hypothesized further that reductions in elk browsing attributable to reductions in elk population size were not sufficient to prevent the suppression of willow growth. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a 20-year, factorial experiment that crossed simulated beaver dams with the exclusion of browsing. We found that willows grew to heights expected for restored communities only in the presence of dams and reduced browsing. Willows experiencing ambient conditions remained well below this expectation. We found no difference in heights or growth rates of willows in experimental controls and willows in 21 randomly chosen sites, confirming that the results of the experiment were representative of range-wide conditions. A reorganized community of large herbivores was implicated in the suppression of willow growth. We conclude that the restoration of large carnivores to the food web failed to restore riparian plant communities on Yellowstone's northern range, supporting the hypothesis that this ecosystem is in an alternative stable state caused primarily by the extirpation of apex predators during the early 20th century.</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecm.1598","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139644520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Limits to species distributions on tropical mountains shift from high temperature to competition as elevation increases","authors":"Jinlin Chen,&nbsp;Owen T. Lewis","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1597","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1597","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Species turnover with elevation is a widespread phenomenon and provides valuable information on why and how ecological communities might reorganize as the climate warms. It is commonly assumed that species interactions are more likely to set warm range limits, while physiological tolerances determine cold range limits. However, most studies are from temperate systems and rely on correlations between thermal physiological traits and range limits; little is known about how physiological traits and biotic interactions change simultaneously along continuous thermal gradients. We used a combination of correlational and experimental approaches to investigate communities of <i>Drosophila</i> flies in rainforests of the Australian Wet Tropics, where there is substantial species turnover with elevation. Our experiments quantified individual-level and population-level responses to temperature, as well as the impact of interspecific competition under different temperature regimes. Species' distributions were better explained by their performance at extreme temperatures than by their thermal optima. Upper thermal limits varied less among species than lower thermal limits. Nonetheless, these small differences were associated with differences in the centered elevation of distribution. Low-elevation species were not those with the lowest tolerance to cold, suggesting that cold temperatures were not limiting their abundance at high elevations. Instead, under upland temperature regimes, abundances of these low-elevation species were reduced by competition with a high-elevation species, in both short- and long-term competition experiments. Our results demonstrate that high-elevation species are confined to their current ranges by high temperatures at lower elevations, indicating that their ranges will be highly sensitive to future warming. Counter to expectation, species interactions strongly influenced community composition at cooler, high-elevation sites. Together, these results raise the possibility that tropical communities differ from better-studied temperate communities in terms of the relative importance of biotic interactions and abiotic factors in shaping community composition and how the impact of these factors will change as temperatures increase.</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecm.1597","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139061515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Phylogeography and climate shape the quantitative genetic landscape and range-wide plasticity of a prevalent conifer","authors":"Jordi Voltas,&nbsp;Ramon Amigó,&nbsp;Tatiana A. Shestakova,&nbsp;Giovanni di Matteo,&nbsp;Raquel Díaz,&nbsp;Rafael Zas","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1596","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1596","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The contribution of genetic adaptation and plasticity to intraspecific phenotypic variability remains insufficiently studied in long-lived plants, as well as the relevance of neutral versus adaptive processes determining such divergence. We examined the importance of phylogeographic structure and climate in modulating genetic and plastic changes and their interdependence in fitness-related traits of a widespread Mediterranean conifer (<i>Pinus pinaster</i>). Four marker-based, previously defined neutral classifications along with two ad hoc climate-based categorizations of 123 range-wide populations were analyzed for their capacity to summarize genetic and plastic effects of height growth and survival (age 20) in 15 common gardens. The plasticity of tree height and differential survival were interpreted through mixed modeling accounting for heteroscedasticity in the genotype-by-environment dataset. The analysis revealed a slight superiority of phylogeographic classifications over climate categorizations on the explanation of genetic and plastic effects, which suggests that neutral processes can be at least as important as isolation by climate as a driving factor of evolutionary divergence in a prevalent pine. The best phylogeographic classification involved eight geographically discrete genetic groups, which explained 92% (height) and 52% (survival) of phenotypic variability, including between-group mean differentiation and differential expression across trials. For height growth, there was high predictability of plastic group responses described by different reaction norm slopes, which were unrelated to between-group mean differentiation. The latter differences (amounting to ca. 40% among groups) dominated intraspecific performance across trials. Local adaptation was evident for genetic groups tested in their native environments in terms of tree height and, especially, survival. This finding was supported by <i>Q</i>_ST &gt; <i>F</i>_ST estimates. Additionally, our range-wide evaluation did not support a general adaptive syndrome by which less reactive groups to ameliorated conditions would be associated with high survival and low growth. In fact, a lack of relationship between mean group differentiation, indicative of genetic adaptation, and predictable group plasticity for height growth suggests different evolutionary trajectories of these mechanisms of phenotypic divergence. Altogether, the existence of predictable adaptive-trait phenotypic variation for the species, involving both genetic differentiation and plastic effects, should facilitate integrating genomics and environment into decision-making tools to assist forests in coping with climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecm.1596","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138450259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Higher metabolic plasticity in temperate compared to tropical lizards suggests increased resilience to climate change: Comment","authors":"Keith Christian,&nbsp;Gavin Bedford,&nbsp;Chava L. Weitzman","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1595","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1595","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135405483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Novel genomic offset metrics integrate local adaptation into habitat suitability forecasts and inform assisted migration","authors":"Susanne Lachmuth,&nbsp;Thibaut Capblancq,&nbsp;Anoob Prakash,&nbsp;Stephen R. Keller,&nbsp;Matthew C. Fitzpatrick","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1593","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1593","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Genomic data are increasingly being integrated into macroecological forecasting, offering an evolutionary perspective that has been largely missing from global change biogeography. Genomic offset, which quantifies the disruption of genotype–environment associations under environmental change, allows for the incorporation of intraspecific climate-associated genomic differentiation into forecasts of habitat suitability. Gradient Forest (GF) is a commonly used approach to estimate genomic offset; however, major hurdles in the application of GF-derived genomic offsets are (1) an inability to interpret their absolute magnitude in an ecologically meaningful way and (2) uncertainty in how their implications compare with those of species-level approaches like Ecological Niche Models (ENMs). Here, we assess the climate change vulnerability of red spruce (<i>Picea rubens</i>), a cool-temperate tree species endemic to eastern North America, using both ENMs and GF modeling of genomic variation along climatic gradients. To gain better insights into climate change risks, we derive and apply two new threshold-based genomic offset metrics—Donor and Recipient Importance—that quantify the transferability of propagules between donor populations and recipient localities while minimizing disruption of genotype–environment associations. We also propose and test a method for scaling genomic offsets relative to contemporary genomic variation across the landscape. In three common gardens, we found a significant negative relationship between (scaled) genomic offsets and red spruce growth and higher explanatory power for scaled offsets than climate transfer distances. However, the garden results also revealed the potential effects of spatial extrapolation and neutral genomic differentiation that can compromise the degree to which genomic offsets represent maladaptation and highlight the necessity of using common garden data to evaluate offset-based predictions. ENMs and our novel genomic offset metrics forecasted drastic northward range shifts in suitable habitats. Combining inferences from our offset-based metrics, we show that a northward shift mainly will be required for populations in the central and northern parts of red spruce's current range, whereas southern populations might persist in situ due to climate-associated variation with less offset under future climate. These new genomic offset metrics thus yield refined, region-specific prognoses for local persistence and show how management could be improved by considering assisted migration.</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135765022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Numerical response of predator to prey: Dynamic interactions and population cycles in Eurasian lynx and roe deer","authors":"Henrik Andrén,&nbsp;Olof Liberg","doi":"10.1002/ecm.1594","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecm.1594","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The dynamic interactions between predators and their prey have two fundamental processes: numerical and functional responses. Numerical response is defined as predator growth rate as a function of prey density or both prey and predator densities [<i>dP/dt</i> = <i>f</i>(<i>N</i>, <i>P</i>)]. Functional response is defined as the kill rate by an individual predator being a function of prey density or prey and predator densities combined. Although there are relatively many studies on the functional response in mammalian predators, the numerical response remains poorly documented. We studied the numerical response of Eurasian lynx (<i>Lynx lynx</i>) to various densities of its primary prey species, roe deer (<i>Capreolus capreolus</i>), and to itself (lynx). We exploited an unusual natural situation, spanning three decades where lynx, after a period of absence in central and southern Sweden, during which roe deer populations had grown to high densities, subsequently recolonized region after region, from north to south. We divided the study area into seven regions, with increasing productivity from north to south. We found strong effects of both roe deer density and lynx density on lynx numerical response. Thus, both resources and intraspecific competition for these resources are important to understanding the lynx population dynamic. We built a series of deterministic lynx–roe deer models, and applied them to the seven regions. We found a very good fit between these Lotka–Volterra type models and the data. The deterministic models produced almost cyclic dynamics or dampened cycles in five of the seven regions. Thus, we documented population cycles in this large predator–large herbivore system, which is rarely done. The amplitudes in the dampened cycles decreased toward the south. Thus, the dynamics between lynx and roe deer became more stable with increasing carrying capacity for roe deer, which is related to higher productivity in the environment. This increased stability could be explained by variation in predation risk, where human presence can act as prey refugia, and by a more diverse prey guild that will weaken the direct interaction between lynx and roe deer.</p>","PeriodicalId":11505,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Monographs","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecm.1594","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135696481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}