了解什么使种群发生同步波动很重要，因为同步对灭绝风险、食物链稳定性和影响一个生态系统的其他因素都有明显效应。相似的捕食者-猎物循环中所涉及的相邻种群经常发生同步振荡，David Vasseur 和Jeremy Fox利用理论及实验室缩微环境发现，当捕食者存在时，猎物种群之间的扩散是造成这种相位锁定（相位同步）的原因。扩散是不同生物（Vasseur 和 Fox所研究的动物是雪兔和加拿大猞猁）从一个分离的种群向另一个转移的能力。由这项工作所获得的模型对于代表捕食者-猎物和宿主-病原体系统的参数的大范围变化都是可靠的，说明它可能具有普遍适用性。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Nature 460, 1007-1010 (20 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08208
Phase-locking and environmental fluctuations generate synchrony in a predator–prey community
David A. Vasseur1 & Jeremy W. Fox2
1 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA
2 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada
Spatially synchronized fluctuations in system state are common in physical and biological systems ranging from individual atoms1 to species as diverse as viruses, insects and mammals2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Although the causal factors are well known for many synchronized phenomena, several processes concurrently have an impact on spatial synchrony of species, making their separate effects and interactions difficult to quantify. Here we develop a general stochastic model of predator–prey spatial dynamics to predict the outcome of a laboratory microcosm experiment testing for interactions among all known synchronizing factors: (1) dispersal of individuals between populations; (2) spatially synchronous fluctuations in exogenous environmental factors (the Moran effect); and (3) interactions with other species (for example, predators) that are themselves spatially synchronized. The Moran effect synchronized populations of the ciliate protist Tetrahymena pyriformis; however, dispersal only synchronized prey populations in the presence of the predator Euplotes patella. Both model and data indicate that synchrony depends on cyclic dynamics generated by the predator. Dispersal, but not the Moran effect, 'phase-locks' cycles, which otherwise become 'decoherent' and drift out of phase. In the absence of cycles, phase-locking is not possible and the synchronizing effect of dispersal is negligible. Interspecific interactions determine population synchrony, not by providing an additional source of synchronized fluctuations, but by altering population dynamics and thereby enhancing the action of dispersal. Our results are robust to wide variation in model parameters representative of many natural predator–prey or host–pathogen systems. This explains why cyclic systems provide many of the most dramatic examples of spatial synchrony in nature.
