Population synchrony decreases with richness and increases with environmental fluctuations in an experimental metacommunity

Fluctuations of local but connected populations may show correlation or synchrony whenever they experience significant dispersal or correlated environmental biotic and abiotic variability. Synchrony may be an important variable in multispecies systems, but its nature and implications have not been explicitly examined. Because the number of locally coexisting species (richness) affects the population variability of community members, we …