Geography of masting synchrony creates more famines than feasts

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Interannually highly variable and synchronized production of large seed crops by perennial plants, called masting, drives resource pulses and famines with cascading effects on food webs. While the spatial scale of masting synchrony is well documented, it remains unclear how synchrony differs between years of seed abundance and failure, and how such dynamics extend across species and space. These gaps are important to resolve, as they determine the magnitude and spatial extent of masting effects on food webs. Using a 36-year dataset from 431 sites spanning seven dominant tree species in temperate Europe, we provide evidence that seed failures are more spatially synchronized than mast peaks, indicating that regional coherence in seed production is structured primarily by reproductive failure. Among-species synchrony was localized, suggesting that temperate forests are unlikely to impose region-wide starvation–satiation cycles on mobile seed consumers: a contrast with highly synchronous tropical dipterocarp systems. From an applied perspective, failure years affect seed availability over broad regions, limiting sourcing options for afforestation and restoration, and underscoring the value of spatially explicit masting forecasting. Because mast peaks and failures differ fundamentally in their food web consequences, our findings highlight the need to better understand and anticipate the ecological impacts of synchronized seed scarcity. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2PW62 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences Moran effect, mast seeding, spatial synchrony, seed production, tail-dependent synchrony, community ecology, resource pulses, reproductive failrue, forest dynamics, climate synchrony Published: 2025-07-17 05:10 Last Updated: 2025-10-05 14:10 CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Conflict of interest statement: none Language: English