Community‐wide changes in intertaxonomic temporal co‐occurrence resulting from phenological shifts

Hua, Fangyuan; Hu, Junhua; Liu, Yang; Giam, Xingli; Lee, Tien Ming; Luo, Hao; Wu, Jiangning; Liang, Qiaoyi; Zhao, Jian; Long, Xiaoyan; Pang, Hong; Wang, Biao; Liang, Wei; Zhang, Zhengwang; Gao, Xiaolong; Zhu, Jiang

doi:10.1111/gcb.13199

Cited by 27 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…, Hua et al. ). There is still, however, considerable uncertainty about how best to measure phenology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Changes in phenological events such as the timing of bird migration, frog spawning, mammal hibernation, and first flowering are considered to be bellwethers of climate change (e.g., Beebee 1995, Inouye et al 2000, Charmantier and Gienapp 2014, and there is broad concern about the potential consequences of climate-induced changes in phenology for species persistence (Willis et al 2008), species interactions (Yang and Rudolf 2009), and ecosystem function (Cleland et al 2007). Studies of phenology focus on issues ranging from natural selection (e.g., Vald es and Ehrl en, 2017) to species interactions (e.g., Reed et al 2013), community structure and ecosystem function, and changes in phenology over time and space (e.g., CaraDonna et al 2014, Hua et al 2016. There is still, however, considerable uncertainty about how best to measure phenology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phenology as a process rather than an event: from individual reaction norms to community metrics

Inouye

Ehrlén

Underwood

2019

Ecological Monographs

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Measures of the seasonal timing of biological events are key to addressing questions about how phenology evolves, modifies species interactions, and mediates biological responses to climate change. Phenology is often characterized in terms of discrete events, such as a date of first flowering or arrival of first migrants. We discuss how phenological events that are typically measured at the population or species level arise from distributions of phenological events across seasons, and from norms of reaction of these phenological events across environments. We argue that individual variation in phenological distributions and reaction norms has important implications for how we should collect, analyze, and interpret phenological information. Regarding phenology as a reaction norm rather than one year's specific values implies that selection acts on the phenologies that an individual expresses over its lifetime. To understand how climate change is likely to influence phenology, we need to consider not only plastic responses along the reaction norm but changes in the reaction norm itself. We show that when individuals vary in their reaction norms, correlations between reaction norm elevation and slope make first events particularly poor estimators of population sensitivity to climate change, and variation in slopes can obscure the pattern of selection on phenology. We also show that knowing the shape of the distribution of phenological events across the season is important for predicting biologically important phenological mismatches with climate change. Last, because phenological events are parts of a continuous developmental process, we suggest that the approach of measuring phenology by recording developmental stages of individuals in a population at a single point in time should be used more widely. We conclude that failure to account for phenological distributions and reaction norms may lead to overinterpretation of metrics based on single events, such as commonly recorded first event dates, and may confound meta‐analyses that use a range of metrics. Rather than prescribing a single universal approach to studying phenology, we point out limitations of inferences based on single metrics and encourage work that considers the multivariate nature of phenology and more tightly links data collection and analyses with biological hypotheses.

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“…, Hua et al. ). There is still, however, considerable uncertainty about how best to measure phenology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenology as a process rather than an event: from individual reaction norms to community metrics

Inouye

Ehrlén

Underwood

2019

Ecological Monographs

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“…The few community-wide studies we are familiar with document changes in first-flower dates (Diez et al 2012), or broad-scale pairwise co-flowering within communities (CaraDonna et al 2014), without determining whether species with different sensitivities to climate cooccur at plot scales, or directly attributing changes in coflowering to changes in climate ( Fig. 1; but see Hua et al 2016 for an example in a vertebrate system).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate drives phenological reassembly of a mountain wildflower meadow community

Theobald

Breckheimer

HilleRisLambers

2017

Ecology

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Spatial community reassembly driven by changes in species abundances or habitat occupancy is a well-documented response to anthropogenic global change, but communities can also reassemble temporally if the environment drives differential shifts in the timing of life events across community members. Much like spatial community reassembly, temporal reassembly could be particularly important when critical species interactions are temporally concentrated (e.g., plant-pollinator dynamics during flowering). Previous studies have documented species-specific shifts in phenology driven by climate change, implying that temporal reassembly, a process we term "phenological reassembly," is likely. However, few studies have documented changes in the temporal co-occurrence of community members driven by environmental change, likely because few datasets of entire communities exist. We addressed this gap by quantifying the relationship between flowering phenology and climate for 48 co-occurring subalpine wildflower species at Mount Rainier (Washington, USA) in a large network of plots distributed across Mt. Rainier's steep environmental gradients; large spatio-temporal variability in climate over the 6 yr of our study (including the earliest and latest snowmelt year on record) provided robust estimates of climate-phenology relationships for individual species. We used these relationships to examine changes to community co-flowering composition driven by 'climate change analog' conditions experienced at our sites in 2015. We found that both the timing and duration of flowering of focal species was strongly sensitive to multiple climatic factors (snowmelt, temperature, and soil moisture). Some consistent responses emerged, including earlier snowmelt and warmer growing seasons driving flowering phenology earlier for all focal species. However, variation among species in their phenological sensitivities to these climate drivers was large enough that phenological reassembly occurred in the climate change analog conditions of 2015. An unexpected driver of phenological reassembly was fine-scale variation in the direction and magnitude of climatic change, causing phenological reassembly to be most apparent early and late in the season and in topographic locations where snow duration was shortest (i.e., at low elevations and on ridges in the landscape). Because phenological reassembly may have implications for many types of ecological interactions, failing to monitor community-level repercussions of species-specific phenological shifts could underestimate climate change impacts.

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“…Species with phenological responses to multiple drivers are not rare [42]. Yet ecological interactions among species with multiple drivers of phenology may be complex and unpredictable [43,44], potentially leading to dire consequences in a changing environment [45]. Our study examined the phenological responses to environmental conditions of adult fireflies; however, data on larvae or sex of the adults were unavailable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermally moderated firefly activity is delayed by precipitation extremes

et al. 2016

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The timing of events in the life history of temperate insects is most typically primarily cued by one of two drivers: photoperiod or temperature accumulation over the growing season. However, an insect's phenology can also be moderated by other drivers like rainfall or the phenology of its host plants. When multiple drivers of phenology interact, there is greater potential for phenological asynchronies to arise between an organism and those with which it interacts. We examined the phenological patterns of a highly seasonal group of fireflies (Photinus spp., predominantly P. pyralis) over a 12-year period (2004–2015) across 10 plant communities to determine whether interacting drivers could explain the variability observed in the adult flight activity density (i.e. mating season) of this species. We found that temperature accumulation was the primary driver of phenology, with activity peaks usually occurring at a temperature accumulation of approximately 800 degree days (base 10°C); however, our model found this peak varied by nearly 180 degree-day units among years. This variation could be explained by a quadratic relationship with the accumulation of precipitation in the growing season; in years with either high or low precipitation extremes at our study site, flight activity was delayed. More fireflies were captured in general in herbaceous plant communities with minimal soil disturbance (alfalfa and no-till field crop rotations), but only weak interactions occurred between within-season responses to climatic variables and plant community. The interaction we observed between temperature and precipitation accumulation suggests that, although climate warming has the potential to disrupt phenology of many organisms, changes to regional precipitation patterns can magnify these disruptions.

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Community‐wide changes in intertaxonomic temporal co‐occurrence resulting from phenological shifts

Cited by 27 publications

References 34 publications

Phenology as a process rather than an event: from individual reaction norms to community metrics

Phenology as a process rather than an event: from individual reaction norms to community metrics

Climate drives phenological reassembly of a mountain wildflower meadow community

Thermally moderated firefly activity is delayed by precipitation extremes

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