Emergent long-range synchronization of oscillating ecological populations without external forcing described by Ising universality

Andrew E. Noble (), Jonathan Machta and Alan Hastings
Additional contact information
Andrew E. Noble: University of California
Jonathan Machta: University of Massachusetts
Alan Hastings: University of California

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Understanding the synchronization of oscillations across space is fundamentally important to many scientific disciplines. In ecology, long-range synchronization of oscillations in spatial populations may elevate extinction risk and signal an impending catastrophe. The prevailing assumption is that synchronization on distances longer than the dispersal scale can only be due to environmental correlation (the Moran effect). In contrast, we show how long-range synchronization can emerge over distances much longer than the length scales of either dispersal or environmental correlation. In particular, we demonstrate that the transition from incoherence to long-range synchronization of two-cycle oscillations in noisy spatial population models is described by the Ising universality class of statistical physics. This result shows, in contrast to all previous work, how the Ising critical transition can emerge directly from the dynamics of ecological populations.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7664 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7664

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7664

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().