Climate change and changes in synchrony

A number of papers have been published now showing that changes in synchrony through altered Moran effects may be another of the major impacts of climate change, including at least one review (Hansen et al, 2020, Ecography). We contributed to the literature on climate-related changes in synchrony, including an early paper (Sheppard et al, 2016) attributing changes in the synchrony of aphid pests to altered Moran effects associated with a change in the North Atlantic Oscillation. Our review on synchrony has a decent narrative introduction to this area of research.

D.C. Reuman, J.A. Walter, L.W. Sheppard, V.A. Karatayev, E.S. Kadiyala, A.C. Lohmann, T.L. Anderson, N.J. Coombs, K.J. Haynes, L.M. Hallett, M.C.N. Castorani. 2025. Insights into spatial synchrony enabled by long-term data. Ecology Letters 28, e70112. doi: 10.1111/ele.70112.

L.W. Sheppard, J. Bell, R. Harrington, D.C. Reuman. 2016. Changes in large-scale climate alter spatial synchrony of aphid pests. Nature Climate Change 6, 610-613. doi: 10.1038/nclimate2881.

E. Defriez, L.W. Sheppard, P.C. Reid, D.C. Reuman. 2016. Climate-change-related regime shifts have altered spatial synchrony of plankton dynamics in the North Sea. Global Change Biology 22, 2069-2080. doi: 10.1111/gcb.13229.

People: Lawrence Sheppard, Jon Walter, Emma Defriez, Dan Reuman