Disturbance and nutrients synchronise kelp forests across scales through interacting Moran effects

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Castorani, M. C. N., Bell, T. W., Walter, J. A., Reuman, D. C., Cavanaugh, K. C., & Sheppard, L. W. Disturbance and nutrients synchronise kelp forests across scales through interacting Moran effects. Ecology Letters, 25(8), (2022): 1854-1868, https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14066.
Spatial synchrony is a ubiquitous and important feature of population dynamics, but many aspects of this phenomenon are not well understood. In particular, it is largely unknown how multiple environmental drivers interact to determine synchrony via Moran effects, and how these impacts vary across spatial and temporal scales. Using new wavelet statistical techniques, we characterised synchrony in populations of giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera, a widely distributed marine foundation species, and related synchrony to variation in oceanographic conditions across 33 years (1987–2019) and >900 km of coastline in California, USA. We discovered that disturbance (storm-driven waves) and resources (seawater nutrients)—underpinned by climatic variability—act individually and interactively to produce synchrony in giant kelp across geography and timescales. Our findings demonstrate that understanding and predicting synchrony, and thus the regional stability of populations, relies on resolving the synergistic and antagonistic Moran effects of multiple environmental drivers acting on different timescales.
This study was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) through linked NSF-OCE awards 2023555, 2023523, 2140335, and 2023474 to M.C.N.C., K.C.C., T.W.B., and D.C.R., respectively. The research was initiated during a synthesis working group at the Long Term Ecological Research Network Office and National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis funded under NSF-DEB award 1545288. D.C.R. and L.W.S. were also partly supported by NSF award 1714195, the McDonnell Foundation, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Delta Science Program. This project used data developed through the Santa Barbara Coastal Long Term Ecological Research project, funded through NSF-OCE award 1831937.