Climate Events Synchronize the Dynamics of a Resident Vertebrate Community in the High Arctic

Abstract

All Together Now Environmental drivers, such as extreme weather events, impact population dynamics and can synchronize such dynamics across populations within a species. Given that many species depend on similar resources, such events might also be expected to synchronize dynamics across species, but the complexity of multispecies communities makes it difficult to reveal potential drivers in common. Hansen et al. (p. 313 ) took advantage of the simplicity of the year-round community on the high-arctic island of Spitsbergen to test for the presence of synchrony. Population fluctuations were synchronized across the three herbivore species (Svalbard reindeer, Svalbard rock ptarmigan, and sibling vole) and the single resident predator, the arctic fox, was in lagged synchrony. The driver of these fluctuations appears to be extreme winter rain-on-snow events that reduce the availability of winter forage due to ice cover.