TY - JOUR T1 - Repeated regime shifts in a desert rodent community JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/163931 SP - 163931 AU - Erica M. Christensen AU - David J. Harris AU - S. K. Morgan Ernest Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/15/163931.abstract N2 - Many communities are experiencing temporal changes in the abundances and/or identities of the species that comprise them. Understanding whether communities are changing gradually or via rapid regime shifts is important because different mechanisms are implicated in different patterns of change. We used a machine learning approach to examine the long-term dynamics of a desert rodent community undergoing compositional change. Our approach detected three regime shifts, where changes in the relative abundances of dominant and rare species occurred, and a period of increased variance in the structure of the community. These events coincided with extreme climate events (two high rain events and two droughts) that caused major declines in rodent abundances, suggesting a possible link between climate and regime shifts at this site. Continued study of the dynamics of community change will provide important information on the processes structuring communities and provide guidance for forecasting how community changes in the future.Statement of authorship EMC conceived the original study; DH contributed the LDA methods and developed the change-point model; EMC and SKME interpreted the results, and all authors contributed to writing the manuscript.Data accessibility statement We confirm that, should this manuscript be accepted, the data supporting the results will be archived in an appropriate public repository such as Dryad or Figshare and the data DOI will be included at the end of the article. ER -