Extended Data Fig. 6: The critical time series length for observing a negative regression slope between species diversity and synchrony.

Relationship between the critical time series length and the population growth rate, under different scenarios of experimental replicates (a) or competition strength (b). Based on our symmetric competition models, the critical time series length is determined as the minimum time series length with more than 80% chance of observing a negative regression slope between diversity and synchrony. In (a), a number of replicates (1 or 5) was simulated for each level of species richness (S = 2, 3, …, 10), and the synchrony-diversity relationships were constructed across all simulated communities under given time series length. In (b), results under two different competition strengths were presented. Other parameters are same as for Fig. 2.