Dr. Jake Ferguson | Ferguson Lab

Abstract:
Population cycles are a common phenomenon though there has been relatively little work assessing how environmental variability can impact these populations. In this talk, I explore how stochastic variation can drive lower total system variance as environmental fluctuations become more variable. 

This effect arises due to the influence of an unstable or stable equilibrium, often driving short-term transient dynamics that lead to qualitative changes in the long-run dynamics. I explore these effects in four ecological examples to illustrate the range of impacts of these effects on ecological systems. These results illustrate the complex interactions between stochasticity and nonlinear dynamics with significant implications for predicting how complex populations will respond to changing environments.