Recent warming produced consistent shifts in seasonal richness of actively flowering species across multiple ecosystems.

TitleRecent warming produced consistent shifts in seasonal richness of actively flowering species across multiple ecosystems.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2025
AuthorsPark, Isaac W., Tadeo H. Ramirez-Parada, Sydne Record, and Susan J. Mazer
JournalEcology
Volume106
Issue11
Paginatione70243
Date Published2025 Nov
ISSN1939-9170
KeywordsBiodiversity, California, climate change, Ecosystem, Flowers, Models, Biological, Plants, Seasons, Species Specificity, Time Factors
Abstract

Many plant species alter both the timing and duration of their flowering in response to changing climate and often differ with respect to the magnitudes or directions of their phenological responses to climate changes. These shifts may have cumulative effects on the diversity of species simultaneously in flower throughout a given flowering season, resulting in periods of disproportionately high or low species richness of actively flowering community members relative to historical conditions. Although the potential for such changes to occur is well appreciated, few studies have assessed how climate trends have affected patterns of co-flowering synchrony due to a scarcity of long-term datasets documenting flowering duration across species in a community. In this study, we leveraged 1,908,706 plant specimens collected in flower to model the effects of warming throughout the past century on the daily species richness of actively flowering species by developing species-specific phenoclimate models for 1848 plant species inhabiting 16 well-documented plant communities across California. These communities are located across a variety of ecoregions, ranging from coastal marshes and grasslands to deserts, chaparral shrublands, and coniferous forests. The recurring patterns in the modeled community-level flowering displays indicate that recent warming has consistently shortened the period during which many species flower concurrently, and that the bloom season has advanced by nearly 5 days on average. Accordingly, within every flora, recent warming was predicted to increase the daily species richness of flowers early in the local growing season, with corresponding reductions in species richness of flowers later in the growing season. Notably, patterns of change in community-level bloom displays were driven primarily by differences among species in the timing of flowering onset, as termination dates tended to advance in unison with onset dates, resulting in minor changes to flowering duration among species.

DOI10.1002/ecy.70243
Alternate JournalEcology
PubMed ID41255051
Grant ListDEB-1556768 / / U.S.A. National Science Foundation, Division of Environmental Biology /
DEB-2105932 / / U.S.A. National Science Foundation, Division of Environmental Biology /
DEB-2242804 / / U.S.A. National Science Foundation, Division of Environmental Biology /
MEO-022425 / / US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Project Award /