Major Ecological Study Underscores Critical Importance of Long-Term Data Collection

A groundbreaking new study co-authored by researchers from the University of Virginia reveals how long-term data collection is crucial to understanding ecological patterns on a large scale, predicting environmental changes and informing conservation and agricultural practices.

The study, recently published in the journal Ecology Letters, focuses on a phenomenon called spatial synchrony — the tendency of the growth and decline of populations of plants and animals to be correlated, even when those populations span vast distances. The research highlights how long-term monitoring significantly enhances scientific understanding of synchrony and its implications.

“Studies lasting several decades are rare in science but play an outsized role in generating knowledge,” said Max Castorani, an associate professor of environmental sciences at UVA and co-author of the study. “Our new synthesis further demonstrates that sustained investment in long-term ecological studies yields breakthroughs in understanding the natural world and its influence on society and industry. This leads to big gains in informing policy and management related to the environment, from climate and weather to forestry and fisheries.”

Long-Term Data Yields Key Scientific Insights

Lead author Daniel Reuman, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, explained that many significant ecological discoveries have emerged from long-term studies of spatial synchrony.

“If you have a study that lasts 20 years, it’s more than twice as valuable as a 10-year study,” Reuman said. “The value increases exponentially. We wanted to highlight ways that long-term scientific monitoring efforts in our field have led to paradigm shifts in conceptual understanding.”

The research team identified three major trends in the study of spatial synchrony: the importance of ecological fluctuations over decades or longer, the environmental drivers of synchrony, and how synchrony patterns shift over time due to climate change and other factors.

“Years ago, researchers had decent theoretical ideas about what caused synchrony, but those ideas were largely untested in real populations,” Reuman said. “Today, thanks to better tools and long-term datasets, scientists can make more accurate inferences about the factors driving synchrony — provided they have sufficient data.”

Implications for Conservation, Climate Science and Agriculture

The study underscores how understanding spatial synchrony can have broad applications beyond academic knowledge about nature. By identifying how trends in plant and animal populations are linked across regions and over time, researchers can better predict climate change effects, manage endangered species and even aid in agricultural planning.

“You can imagine this in an agricultural context,” Reuman said. “In a prior study, we examined population synchrony in aphids, a major crop pest. When aphid populations synchronize across a region, pest outbreaks occur simultaneously in multiple areas, potentially reducing crop yields across the entire region.”

Kyle Haynes, a UVA research professor of environmental sciences and co-author of the study, added that rising synchrony levels due to climate change could pose increasing threats to biodiversity.

“Looking across long-term studies of a variety of different species, we see evidence that synchrony in populations tends to be increasing over time in response to increasing synchrony in climate,” Haynes said. “The implications are stark. For example, the persistence of rare species could become increasingly threatened with extinction. Synchrony among the local populations of a species increases the instability of the species as a whole.”

In a related study to be published in a forthcoming issue of Ecology Letters, Haynes and two former UVA PhD students, including lead author Clare Rodenberg, investigated synchrony in the spread of an invasive insect known as the spongy moth. The study found that rates of spread by the insect also exhibit synchrony, influenced by repeating climate patterns. Using advanced techniques to analyze data on climate and moth populations from 1990 to 2020, the team discovered that the moth's spread is linked to these climate patterns, which may allow managers to predict when and where the moth will spread next. This work underscores the significance of collecting long-term data to manage the danger the insect poses to North American forests.

Collaboration Across Institutions

The research brought together an interdisciplinary team from multiple institutions. In addition to Castorani and Haynes, UVA contributors to the study included graduate student Ethan Kadiyala, and former postdoctoral scholars Amanda Lohmann and Jonathan Walter, who is now affiliated with the University of California, Davis. Additional authors include Vadim Karatayev from the University of Maryland, Nat Coombs from the University of Kansas, Lawrence Sheppard from the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, Thomas L. Anderson from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and Lauren M. Hallett from the University of Oregon. 

The study relied heavily on data gathered over decades by long-term research programs, emphasizing the importance of sustained investments in ecological studies.

The study’s findings add to growing evidence that understanding synchrony has far-reaching consequences for environmental policy, conservation planning and global food security.

“Scientists have studied the effects of climate change in many ways, but only recently have we recognized that changes in large-scale synchrony patterns can be another consequence of shifting climatic variables,” Reuman said. “With climate change accelerating, we need to continue investing in the long-term data collection that makes these insights possible.”