# Asynchrony Drives Plant and Animal Community Stability in Mediterranean Coastal Dunes
## 3 Results  
In total, data points were collected in 4176 quadrats for annuals, 4140 pitfall trap-nights for beetles, and 5022 Sherman trap-nights for rodents, as well as 704 activity-transects, 352 track-transects, and 1760 pitfall trap-nights for reptiles. Overall, species richness was highest for annual plant species (\(n=63\)), of which 41 species were included in the analysis after the exclusion of rare species. Beetles were the second most diverse group across all dunes (\(n=48\) morphospecies), of which 32 were included in the analysis. Twenty reptile species were recorded, of which 15 were included. Finally, a total of five rodent species were found in Nizzanim LTER, of which three species were included. Figure 2 shows the regressions for PPC and Average species richness (Richness) against \(CVcomm\) for each taxon. Richness was not significantly correlated to community variability (\(CVcomm\)) for any taxon except rodents (Figure 2c), such that increased richness was associated with a decrease in \(CVcomm\) (an increase in community stability). Annual plants also showed a unimodal trend for PPC, with intermediate cover associated with the highest degree of community variability (Figure 2e). \(CVcomm\) for both rodents and beetles significantly increased with increasing PPC (Figure 2f,g). Reptile stability showed no correlation with either parameter (Figure 2d,h). Plots of the regressions of \(CVpop\_av.weighted\) and synchrony against community variability are given in Figure 3. As can be seen above, only beetles had a positive relationship between \(CVpop\_av.weighted\) and \(CVcomm\) (Figure 3b), while all four taxa had a significant positive relationship between synchrony and \(CVcomm\) (Figure 3e-h). Since there were many correlations between all the different variables across four taxonomic groups, we provide a summary for each taxa in Figure 4, showing all significant correlations between parameters (including those shown in Figures 2 and 3), with directionality depicted as arrows from the independent (X) to the dependent (Y) parameter Regression outputs for all taxa are reported in Supplementary Materials Table S2. As seen in Figure 4, each taxonomic group showed different strengths and directions for the relationships among parameters. Overall, no two taxa shared the same directionality in relationships across all parameters. PPC had little effect on weighted population variability (\(CVpop\_av.weighted\)) except for annuals, where a unimodal bell-shaped curve was observed. For annuals, richness also presented a bell-shaped relationship with \(CVpop\_av.weighted\), and the latter had a similar bell-shaped curve with \(CVcomm\). Perennial plant cover (PPC) had a different relationship with synchrony depending on the taxon. A positive relationship was found for beetles and rodents, whereas a U-shaped response was present for annual plants, with intermediate cover associated with the lowest degree of synchrony. Reptiles did not show any significant relationship between synchrony and PPC; synchrony remained relatively high across all dunes, ranging between 0.7 and 0.8. All four taxa were found to have a significant relationship between synchrony and richness, but the directionality differed between taxa; a negative relationship was found for beetles and reptiles, a positive correlation for reptiles, and a U-relationship for annuals. Within each taxon, the adjusted R\({}^{2}\) (_adj.R\({}^{2}\)_) values for each regression were used as an indication of which parameter explained the most variation for a given dependent variable. Thus, PPC explained more variation than richness for asynchrony of annuals (_adj.R\({}^{2}\)_ = 0.75 and _adj.R\({}^{2}\)_ = 0.56, respectively), and beetles (_adj.R\({}^{2}\)_ = 0.67 and 0.55, respectively). However, PPC explained less than richness for rodent synchrony (_adj.R\({}^{2}\)_ = 0.70 and 0.91, respectively) and reptile synchrony (_adj.R\({}^{2}\)_ = 0.01 and 0.56, respectively).