In Search of Universality in the Short-Time Dynamics of Systems of Coupled Ecological Oscillators

Synchronization is a widespread phenomenon observed in many oscillatory ecological systems. This prevalence creates the expectation of universal and detail-independent principles that can explain the emergence of patterns of synchrony. Ecological systems consisting of spatially extended noisy coupled two-cycle oscillators go through a second-order phase transition from synchrony to disorder as the stochasticity increases. In the vicinity of this critical transition, these models' dynamic and static properties show anomalies and follow detail-independent scaling relationships with critical exponents, which are usually measured at equilibrium. Working with models allows us to accommodate the long transition times to reach equilibrium. However, in reality, these transition times are often much longer than ecologically relevant timescales, which makes this approach less practical when working with real ecological data. In this study, we use the Short Time Critical Dynamics (STCD) approach to explore the universality of the time evolution of the order parameter of these models at a much shorter timescale before they reach equilibrium. 

This work is supported by NSF grant DMS-1840221.