Asynchronous Spatiotemporal Demography of a House Sparrow Metapopulation in a Correlated Environment

Abstract

One important question in ecology is how large-scale regional phenomena affect the demography and dynamics of local populations. The purpose of the present study was to examine how climate affected spatial and temporal variation in demography within an insular metapopulation of House Sparrows (Passer domesticus). Daily weather conditions during the breeding season were highly correlated within the study region, and because the onset of breeding differed significantly among the five study islands, fledgling success was also affected. Thus, local recruitment was reduced by the occurrence of bad weather during the nestling period, and the asynchronous breeding phenology among the islands led to a significant island × year interaction in recruitment rate. Interaction between climate and the local environment provides a mechanism by which spatial synchrony in population dynamics can be reduced even in strongly spatially autocorrelated environments.