Responses of sequential and hierarchical phenological events to warming and cooling in alpine meadows

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 12489 - 8
• Main Authors: Li, Xine, Jiang, Lili, Meng, Fandong, Wang, Shiping, Niu, Haishan, Iler, Amy M., Duan, Jichuan, Zhang, Zhenhua, Luo, Caiyun, Cui, Shujuan, Zhang, Lirong, Li, Yaoming, Wang, Qi, Zhou, Yang, Bao, Xiaoying, Dorji, Tsechoe, Li, Yingnian, Peñuelas, Josep, Du, Mingyuan, Zhao, Xinquan, Zhao, Liang, Wang, Guojie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 18.08.2016; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/158/2165/2457; 631/158/2453; 631/449/2668; Alpine regions; Climate change; Cold Temperature; Cooling; Ecology; Ecosystem; Grassland; Hot Temperature; Humanities and Social Sciences; Life history; Low temperature; multidisciplinary; Phenology; Plant communities; Reproduction; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Temperature; Oregon; Beijing China; Tibetan Plateau; United States > US; China; Denmark; Aarhus Denmark; Spain
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12489

Organisms’ life cycles consist of hierarchical stages, from a single phenological stage (for example, flowering within a season), to vegetative and reproductive phases, to the total lifespan of the individual. Yet phenological events are typically studied in isolation, limiting our understanding of life history responses to climate change. Here, we reciprocally transfer plant communities along an elevation gradient to investigate plastic changes in the duration of sequential phenological events for six alpine species. We show that prolonged flowering leads to longer reproductive phases and activity periods when plants are moved to warmer locations. In contrast, shorter post-fruiting leaf and flowering stages led to shorter vegetative and reproductive phases, respectively, which resulted in shorter activity periods when plants were moved to cooler conditions. Therefore, phenological responses to warming and cooling do not simply mirror one another in the opposite direction, and low temperature may limit reproductive allocation in the alpine region. Describing changes in the timing of life history events is critical to understanding effects of climate change. Wang et al . relocated plant communities up and down elevation gradients and found that warming lengthened the reproductive and activity phases, while cooling reduced the vegetative and reproductive phases.