Synchrony in Metapopulations with Sporadic Dispersal

We study synchronization in ecological networks under the realistic assumption that the coupling among the patches is sporadic/stochastic and due to rare and short-term meteorological conditions. Each patch is described by a tritrophic food chain model, representing the producer, consumer, and predator. If all three species can migrate, we rigorously prove that the network can synchronize as long as the migration occurs frequently, i.e. fast compared to the period of the ecological cycle, even though the network is disconnected most of the time. In the case where only the top trophic level (i.e. the predator) can migrate, we reveal an unexpected range of intermediate switching frequencies where synchronization becomes stable in a network which switches between two nonsynchronous dynamics. As spatial synchrony increases the danger of extinction, this counterintuitive effect of synchrony emerging from slower switching dispersal can be destructive for overall metapopulation persistence, presumably expected from switching between two dynamics which are unfavorable to extinction.