DOI: 10.5061/dryad.xsj3tx9bb
title: Data from: Mast seeding patterns are asynchronous at a continental scale

description: Resource pulses are rare events with a short duration and high magnitude
 that drive the dynamics of both plant and animal populations and
 communities. Mast seeding is perhaps the most common type of resource
 pulse that occurs in terrestrial ecosystems, is characterized by the
 synchronous and highly variable production of seed crops by a population
 of perennial plants, is widespread both taxonomically and geographically,
 and is often associated with nutrient scarcity. The rare production of
 abundant seed crops (mast events) that are orders of magnitude greater
 than crops during low seed years leads to high reproductive success in
 seed consumers and has cascading impacts in ecosystems. Although it has
 been suggested that mast seeding is potentially synchronized at
 continental scales, studies are largely constrained to local areas
 covering tens to hundreds of kilometres. Furthermore, summer temperature,
 which acts as a cue for mast seeding, shows patterns at continental scales
 manifested as a juxtaposition of positive and negative anomalies that have
 been linked to irruptive movements of boreal seed-eating birds. Here, we
 show a breakdown in synchrony of mast seeding patterns across space,
 leading to asynchrony at the continental scale. In an analysis of
 synchrony for a transcontinental North America tree species spanning
 distances of greater than 5,200 km, we found that mast seeding patterns
 were significantly asynchronous at distances of greater than 2,000 km
 apart (all P &lt; 0.05). Other studies have shown
 declines in synchrony across distance, but not asynchrony. Spatiotemporal
 variation in summer temperatures at the continental scale drives patterns
 of synchrony in mast seeding, and we anticipate that this affects the
 spatial dynamics of numerous seed-eating communities, from insects to
 small mammals to the large-scale migration patterns of boreal seed-eating
 birds.
description: <b>LaMontagne – Bibliography for data
 sources.doc: </b>This is a bibliography for the datasets used in the
 study (see also Pearse, LaMontagne, Koenig 2017).
 <strong>LaMontagne - Site correlations.csv:</strong>
 The data show information for pairs of sites (site1, site2) showing the
 distance between them based on latitude/longiture, proxmity (1 is the same
 site, 0 is the farthest distance between sites), and correlations over
 time between sites for cone production (in year t), mean July temperature
 (in year t-1), mean July temperature (in year t-2), and total June
 precipitation (in year t). Temperature and precipitation data were
 obtained from Daymet for each site.
 <strong>LaMontagne - Mast year models.csv:</strong>
 These data show the reference for the datasets (see 'Bibliography for
 data sources.doc' for the full list), location of each
 site (latitude, longitude), Region (AK=Alaska, YT=Yukon, AB=Alberta,
 ON=Ontario, QC=Quebec), the occurrence of mast events (1) or no-mast event
 (0) for each year (Mastyear (is year t)) and the previous year
 (Mastyear_lagtm1) based on LaMontagne and Boutin (2009) Journal of
 Vegetation Science. Data on mean monthly July temperature in year tm1 and
 in year tm2, deltaT is year tm1 minus tm2, and the Anomaly data is the
 mean based on year tm1 minus (mean temperature from 1985 to year tm2). All
 temperature data were obtained from Daymet.
description: See ReadMe files and information in the methods section
 of LaMontagne et al. 2020. Nature Plants. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-020-0647-x