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Mast seeding patterns are asynchronous at a continental scale

Abstract

Resource pulses are rare events with a short duration and high magnitude that drive the dynamics of both plant and animal populations and communities1. Mast seeding is perhaps the most common type of resource pulse that occurs in terrestrial ecosystems2, is characterized by the synchronous and highly variable production of seed crops by a population of perennial plants3,4, is widespread both taxonomically and geographically5, and is often associated with nutrient scarcity6. The rare production of abundant seed crops (mast events) that are orders of magnitude greater than crops during low seed years leads to high reproductive success in seed consumers and has cascading impacts in ecosystems2,7. Although it has been suggested that mast seeding is potentially synchronized at continental scales8, studies are largely constrained to local areas covering tens to hundreds of kilometres. Furthermore, summer temperature, which acts as a cue for mast seeding9, shows patterns at continental scales manifested as a juxtaposition of positive and negative anomalies that have been linked to irruptive movements of boreal seed-eating birds10,11. Here, we show a breakdown in synchrony of mast seeding patterns across space, leading to asynchrony at the continental scale. In an analysis of synchrony for a transcontinental North America tree species spanning distances of greater than 5,200 km, we found that mast seeding patterns were significantly asynchronous at distances of greater than 2,000 km apart (all P < 0.05). Other studies have shown declines in synchrony across distance, but not asynchrony. Spatiotemporal variation in summer temperatures at the continental scale drives patterns of synchrony in mast seeding, and we anticipate that this affects the spatial dynamics of numerous seed-eating communities, from insects to small mammals to the large-scale migration patterns of boreal seed-eating birds.

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Fig. 1: Correlograms for mast seeding and weather patterns between sites up to distances of 5,227 km apart.
Fig. 2: Mast seeding patterns for white spruce at sites in Yukon and Quebec.
Fig. 3: Maps of ∆T of mean July temperature and mast-event occurrence.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available in Dryad at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xsj3tx9bb.

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Acknowledgements

We thank everyone who collected and contributed data, including C. Krebs and D. Pamalarek, and B. Chaudhary, M. Bell and B. Zuckerberg for providing feedback on the manuscript. Funding for this research was provided by NSF grants DEB-1745496 and DEB-1926341 to J.M.L. and NSF grant DEB-1256394 to W.D.K., as well as funding from the McIntire–Stennis program and a series (2005–2014) of NSERC grants to D.F.G. Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.

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Contributions

Data were compiled by J.M.L, I.S.P. and W.D.K., and data were contributed by D.F.G. J.M.L. conducted the data analysis and wrote the manuscript with contributions from all of the authors.

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Correspondence to Jalene M. LaMontagne.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Plants thanks Magdalena Żywiec and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1

Summary of 68 datasets on white spruce reproduction including the number of sites in each region (n).

Extended Data Fig. 2

Multiple regression on distance matrices (MRM) results for spatial proximity and weather factors affecting mean synchrony of white spruce reproduction in year t.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Time series (1985–2014) of standardized annual white spruce reproduction with a minimum of six years of data.

Black lines represent individual time series from sites in five regions including: Alaska a, Yukon b, Alberta c, Ontario d, and Quebec e.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Model comparisons for the occurrence of mast years in white spruce.

Mast years are included as a binary response variable in generalized linear mixed effects models with temperature patterns and lag of mast years. ‘k’ represents the number of parameters in the model (see methods), ‘ΔAICc’ is the sample-size corrected AIC value compared to the best model, ‘wi’ is the weight, and cR2 is the conditional R2 for each model based on both fixed and random effects.

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LaMontagne, J.M., Pearse, I.S., Greene, D.F. et al. Mast seeding patterns are asynchronous at a continental scale. Nat. Plants 6, 460–465 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-020-0647-x

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