Data from: Mating opportunity increases with synchrony of flowering among years more than synchrony within years in a nonmasting perennial

The timing and synchrony of mating activity in a population may vary both within and among years. With the exception of masting species, in which reproductive activity fluctuates dramatically among years, mating synchrony is typically studied within years. However, opportunities to mate also vary among years in non-masting iteroparous species. We demonstrate that studying only within-year flowering synchrony fails to accurately quantify mating opportunity in an experimental population (n = 286) of a non-masting species, Echinacea angustifolia. We quantified individuals' synchrony of flowering within and among years and partitioned the contribution of each measure to mean daily mating potential, the number of potential mates per individual per day averaged over every day it flowered during the 11-year study period. Individual within- and among-year synchrony displayed wide variation and were weakly correlated. Each contributed to mean daily mating potential to differing extents, indicating that consequences of flowering synchrony, such as mate availability, vary in magnitude between temporal scales. In particular, among-year synchrony explained 39% more variation in mean daily mating potential than did within-year synchrony. Thus, among-year synchrony likely has underappreciated significance for mating dynamics in non-masting species.种群内交配活动的时间与同步性，可在年内与年际两个维度上存在差异。除大年结实物种（masting species）——这类物种的繁殖活动在年际间波动幅度极大——之外，学界对交配同步性的研究通常仅局限于年内尺度。但在非大年结实的多次繁殖物种（iteroparous species）中，交配机会同样存在年际间的差异。我们以非大年结实物种窄叶松果菊（Echinacea angustifolia）的实验种群（样本量n=286）为研究对象，证实仅开展年内开花同步性研究，无法准确量化其交配机会。我们量化了个体在年内及年际间的开花同步性，并拆分了两类同步性指标对平均每日交配潜力的贡献：平均每日交配潜力指在为期11年的研究周期内，个体在其开花的每一天中，平均可获得的潜在配偶数量。个体的年内及年际开花同步性均表现出广泛的变异，且二者相关性较弱。两者对平均每日交配潜力的贡献程度各不相同，这表明开花同步性所带来的后果（如配偶可获得性）在不同时间尺度上的影响强度存在差异。具体而言，年际同步性对平均每日交配潜力变异的解释度比年内同步性高出39%。由此可见，年际同步性对非大年结实物种交配动态的重要性，可能长期被学界低估。