A new analysis on environmental autocorrelation values in animal populations

Background/Question/Methods

High levels of environmental autocorrelation have been proposed to be a significant contributor to species persistance propability. Here we reexamined the magnitude of environmental autocorrelation in population dynamics time series from the Globabl Population Dynamics Database, jointly estimating population dynamics models along with the strength of environmental autocorrelation.

Results/Conclusions

We found that accounting for population dynamics along with environmental autocorrelation can improve estimates and leads to the conclusion that most levels of environmental autocorrelation are far below previous estimates. We conclude that environmental autocorrelation may not be a significant contributor to species extinction probabilities. Additionally, we compiled the observed lag structure in these models and found that most dynamics follow a classic density dependence structure. The effects of measurement error on these conclusions will be discussed.