Climate change increases flowering duration, driving phenological reassembly and elevated co-flowering richness

Matthew W. Austin, Adam B. Smith, Kenneth M. Olsen, Peter C. Hoch, Kyra N. Krakos, Stefani P. Schmocker, Nicole E. Miller-Struttmann

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Changes to flowering phenology are a key response of plants to climate change. However, we know little about how these changes alter temporal patterns of reproductive overlap (i.e. phenological reassembly). We combined long-term field (1937–2012) and herbarium records (1850–2017) of 68 species in a flowering plant community in central North America and used a novel application of Bayesian quantile regression to estimate changes to flowering season length, altered richness and composition of co-flowering assemblages, and whether phenological shifts exhibit seasonal trends. Across the past century, phenological shifts increased species' flowering durations by 11.5 d on average, which resulted in 94% of species experiencing greater flowering overlap at the community level. Increases to co-flowering were particularly pronounced in autumn, driven by a greater tendency of late season species to shift the ending of flowering later and to increase flowering duration. Our results demonstrate that species-level phenological shifts can result in considerable phenological reassembly and highlight changes to flowering duration as a prominent, yet underappreciated, effect of climate change. The emergence of an autumn co-flowering mode emphasizes that these effects may be season-dependent.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2486-2500
Number of pages15
JournalNew Phytologist
Volume243
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2024

Keywords

  • co-flowering
  • flowering duration
  • flowering synchrony
  • global change
  • growing season
  • phenological shift
  • species interactions
  • temporal species assemblage

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