Seasonality in ecology: Progress and prospects in theory
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Mathematical Biology
- Keywords
- annual cycle, phenology, seasonal variability, seasonal forcing, temporal variability, timescales
- Copyright
- © 2019 White et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. Seasonality in ecology: Progress and prospects in theory. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27235v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27235v2
Abstract
Seasonality is an important feature of essentially all natural systems but the consequences of seasonality have been vastly underappreciated. Early work emphasized the role of seasonality in driving cyclic population dynamics, but the consequences of seasonality for ecological processes are far broader. Yet, seasonality is often not explicitly included in either empirical or theoretical studies. Many aspects of ecological dynamics can only be understood when seasonality is included, ranging from the oscillations in the incidence of childhood diseases to the coexistence of species. Through several case studies, we outline what is now known about seasonality in an ecological context and set the stage for future efforts. We discuss approaches for incorporating seasonality in mathematical models, including Floquet theory. We argue, however, that these tools are still limited in scope and more approaches need to be developed.
Author Comment
This new version includes fewer tables/figures and reduces the overall length by making sections more concise.