Dynamic Consequences of Phenological Asynchrony in a Consumer-Resource Model

Abstract

The relative phenology of interacting ecological populations directly influences their abilities to grow and persist. Differential phenological shifts, resulting in phenological asynchrony between interacting populations, can be detrimental to those that depend upon another species for survival (i.e., specialist consumers). There remains a lack of research regarding the long-term effects of phenological asynchrony on population dynamics. Given that phenological asynchrony is expected to become more prevalent with climate change, it is vital that we understand its consequences. This thesis contributes to our understanding of these long-term effects through the construction and analysis of a mathematical model. We derive a phenologically explicit "semi-discrete" model for a specialist consumer and its resource that overwinter in a dormant state. We observe that higher asynchrony has a stabilizing effect, but it increases the risk of consumer extinction. We show that for different consumer species, varying amounts of asynchrony result in the maximum long-term density.