van de Pol, Martijn, and Cockburn, Andrew (2011) Identifying the critical climatic time window that affects trait expression. American Naturalist, 177 (5). pp. 698-707.

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Abstract

Identifying the critical time window during which climatic drivers affect the expression of phenological, behavioral, and demographic traits is crucial for predicting the impact of climate change on trait and population dynamics. Two widely used associative methods exist to identify critical climatic periods: sliding-window models and recursive operators in which the memory of past weather fades over time. Both approaches have different strong points, which we combine here into a single method. Our method uses flexible functions to differentially weight past weather, which can reflect competing hypotheses about time lags and the relative importance of recent and past weather for trait expression. Using a 22-year data set, we illustrate that the climatic window identified by our new method explains more of the phenological variation in a sexually selected trait than existing approaches. Our new method thus helps to better identify the critical time window and the causes of trait response to environmental variability.

Item ID:	80087
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1537-5323
Copyright Information:	© 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
Research Data:	http://datadryad.org/handle/10255/dryad.8277
Date Deposited:	01 Sep 2023 03:39
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310307 Population ecology @ 50% 49 MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES > 4905 Statistics > 490502 Biostatistics @ 50%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 50% 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280118 Expanding knowledge in the mathematical sciences @ 50%
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