Nonlinear life table response experiment analysis: Decomposing nonlinear and nonadditive population growth responses to changes in environmental drivers.
Life table response experiments (LTREs) decompose differences in population growth rate between environments into separate contributions from each underlying demographic rate. However, most LTRE analyses make the unrealistic assumption that the relationships between demographic rates and environmental drivers are linear and independent, which may result in diminished accuracy when these assumptions are violated. We extend regression LTREs to incorporate nonlinear (second-order) terms and compare the accuracy of both approaches for three previously published demographic datasets. We show that the second-order approach equals or outperforms the linear approach for all three case studies, even when all of the underlying vital rate functions are linear. Nonlinear vital rate responses to driver changes contributed most to population growth rate responses, but life history changes also made substantial contributions. Our results suggest that moving from linear to second-order LTRE analyses could improve our understanding of population responses to changing environments.
Duke Scholars
Altmetric Attention Stats
Dimensions Citation Stats
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Population Growth
- Population Dynamics
- Life Tables
- Ecology
- 4104 Environmental management
- 4102 Ecological applications
- 3103 Ecology
- 0603 Evolutionary Biology
- 0602 Ecology
- 0501 Ecological Applications
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Population Growth
- Population Dynamics
- Life Tables
- Ecology
- 4104 Environmental management
- 4102 Ecological applications
- 3103 Ecology
- 0603 Evolutionary Biology
- 0602 Ecology
- 0501 Ecological Applications