Predicting phenology by integrating ecology, evolution and climate science

TLDR

Ecologists aim to forecast species and ecosystem responses to climate change, yet predicting phenological variation across species, habitats, and time remains limited despite strong climate links. This study proposes integrating ecology, climate science, and evolutionary biology to improve predictions of phenological responses to climate variability. The authors combine seasonal and interannual climate patterns with niche theory and community phylogenetics to construct a predictive framework for species’ phenological responses. The framework predicts that high‑latitude and early‑season species will be most climate‑sensitive with conserved phenologies, temperate species will shift phenology in time, tropical species will shift spatially or evolve, and the approach applies broadly to plant responses to climate variability.

Abstract

Abstract Forecasting how species and ecosystems will respond to climate change has been a major aim of ecology in recent years. Much of this research has focused on phenology – the timing of life‐history events. Phenology has well‐demonstrated links to climate, from genetic to landscape scales; yet our ability to explain and predict variation in phenology across species, habitats and time remains poor. Here, we outline how merging approaches from ecology, climate science and evolutionary biology can advance research on phenological responses to climate variability. Using insight into seasonal and interannual climate variability combined with niche theory and community phylogenetics, we develop a predictive approach for species’ reponses to changing climate. Our approach predicts that species occupying higher latitudes or the early growing season should be most sensitive to climate and have the most phylogenetically conserved phenologies. We further predict that temperate species will respond to climate change by shifting in time, while tropical species will respond by shifting space, or by evolving. Although we focus here on plant phenology, our approach is broadly applicable to ecological research of plant responses to climate variability.