Received: 28 November 2018 Revised: 5 August 2019 Accepted: 16 August 2019 Published on: 5 November 2019 DOI: 10.1002/1438-390X.12025 ORIGINAL ARTICLE - INVITED Nonlinear time series analysis unravels underlying mechanisms of interspecific synchrony among foliage-feeding forest Lepidoptera species Kazutaka Kawatsu1 | Takehiko Yamanaka2 | Jan Patoèka3† | Andrew M. Liebhold3,4 1Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan Abstract 2Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, Interspecific synchrony, that is, synchrony in population dynamics among sympatric NARO (NIAES), Tsukuba, Japan populations of different species can arise via several possible mechanisms, including com- 3Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, mon environmental effects, direct interactions between species, and shared trophic interac- Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, tions, so that distinguishing the relative importance of these causes can be challenging. In Praha, Czech Republic 4USDA Forest Service Northeastern this study, to overcome this difficulty, we combine traditional correlation analysis with a Research Station, Morgantown, West novel framework of nonlinear time series analysis, empirical dynamic modeling (EDM). Virginia The EDM is an analytical framework to identify causal relationships and measure chang- Correspondence ing interaction strength from time series. We apply this approach to time series of sympat- Kazutaka Kawatsu, Graduate School of Life ric foliage-feeding forest Lepidoptera species in the Slovak Republic and yearly mean Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai temperature, precipitation and North Atlantic Oscillation Index. These Lepidoptera species 980-8578, Japan. Email:
[email protected] include both free-feeding and leaf-roller larval life histories: the former are hypothesized to be more strongly affected by similar exogenous environments, while the latter are iso- Funding information lated from such pressures.