Review

Predicting phenology by integrating ecology, evolution and climate science

  1. Stephanie Pau1,†,*,
  2. Elizabeth M. Wolkovich2,†,
  3. Benjamin I. Cook3,
  4. T. Jonathan Davies4,
  5. Nathan J. B. Kraft5,
  6. Kjell Bolmgren6,
  7. Julio L. Betancourt7,
  8. Elsa E. Cleland2

Article first published online: 19 SEP 2011

DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02515.x

Issue

Global Change Biology

Global Change Biology

Volume 17, Issue 12, pages 3633–3643, December 2011

Additional Information

How to Cite

Pau, S., Wolkovich, E. M., Cook, B. I., Davies, T. J., Kraft, N. J. B., Bolmgren, K., Betancourt, J. L. and Cleland, E. E. (2011), Predicting phenology by integrating ecology, evolution and climate science. Global Change Biology, 17: 3633–3643. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02515.x

Author Information

  1. 1

    National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

  2. 2

    Division of Biological Sciences, University of California – San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

  3. 3

    NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY, USA

  4. 4

    Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

  5. 5

    Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

  6. 6

    Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

  7. 7

    U.S. Geological Survey, National Research Program, Tucson, AZ, USA

  1. †

    S. Pau and E.M. Wolkovich Authors contributed equally to the work.

*Correspondence: S. Pau, tel. + 805 892 2517, fax + 805 892 2510, e-mail: pau@nceas.ucsb.edu

  1. †

    S. Pau and E.M. Wolkovich Authors contributed equally to the work.

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 17 OCT 2011
  2. Article first published online: 19 SEP 2011
  3. Accepted manuscript online: 3 AUG 2011 04:12PM EST
  4. Manuscript Accepted: 21 JUL 2011
  5. Manuscript Revised: 11 JUL 2011
  6. Manuscript Received: 29 MAR 2011

Funded by

  • National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. Grant Number: Grant #EF-0553768
  • USA National Phenology Network and its NSF. Grant Numbers: IOS-0639794, DBI-0905806

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Keywords:

  • environmental filtering;
  • growing-degree day models;
  • niche conservatism;
  • photoperiod;
  • temperature sensitivity;
  • temporal niche

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.

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