Noise Colour, Synchrony and Extinctions in Spatially Structured Populations

Abstract

I analyse the importance and influence of noise with positive autocorrelation ('red noise') to extinction risk in spatially structured populations using a set of simple population dynamical simulation models. Noise colour has a major influence on both local and global extinction risk, level of synchrony in population dynamics, and spatial patterns of the synchrony. Generally, the stronger the autocorrelation in the noise is, the higher is the global extinction risk even though local extinction risk may decrease. Populations with high intrinsic growth rate are more prone to global extinction than populations with low growth rate. The influence of autocorrelated noise on population synchrony depends strongly on the way in which environmental noise is introduced into the model.