State Key Laboratory of Herbage Improvement and Grassland Agro-ecosystems, College of Ecology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
Ecology. 2023 Jan;104(1):e3862. doi: 10.1002/ecy.3862. Epub 2022 Nov 17.
The timing of phenological events is highly sensitive to climate change, and may influence ecosystem structure and function. Although changes in flowering phenology among species under climate change have been reported widely, how species-specific shifts will affect phenological synchrony and community-level phenology patterns remains unclear. We conducted a manipulative experiment of warming and precipitation addition and reduction to explore how climate change affected flowering phenology at the species and community levels in an alpine meadow on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. We found that warming advanced the first and last flowering times differently and with no consistent shifts in flowering duration among species, resulting in the entire flowering period of species emerging earlier in the growing season. Early-flowering species were more sensitive to warming than mid- and late-flowering species, thereby reducing flowering synchrony among species and extending the community-level flowering season. However, precipitation and its interactions with warming had no significant effects on flowering phenology. Our results suggest that temperature regulates flowering phenology from the species to community levels in this alpine meadow community, yet how species shifted their flowering timing and duration in response to warming varied. This species-level divergence may reshape flowering phenology in this alpine plant community. Decreasing flowering synchrony among species and the extension of community-level flowering seasons under warming may alter future trophic interactions, with cascading consequences to community and ecosystem function.
物候事件的时间高度敏感于气候变化，并可能影响生态系统的结构和功能。尽管在气候变化下物种的开花物候变化已被广泛报道，但物种特异性的转变将如何影响物候同步性和群落水平的物候模式仍不清楚。我们进行了一项增温和降水增加与减少的控制实验，以探讨气候变化如何影响青藏高原东部高山草甸的物种和群落水平的开花物候。我们发现，变暖使物种的第一和最后开花时间不同，开花持续时间没有一致的变化，导致整个物种的开花期在生长季节更早地出现。早开花物种比中晚开花物种对变暖更敏感，从而减少了物种间的开花同步性，并延长了群落水平的开花季节。然而，降水及其与变暖的相互作用对开花物候没有显著影响。我们的结果表明，在这个高山草甸群落中，温度从物种水平到群落水平调节着开花物候，但物种对变暖的开花时间和持续时间的变化方式不同。这种物种水平的差异可能会重塑这个高山植物群落的开花物候。在变暖条件下，物种间的开花同步性降低和群落水平开花季节的延长可能会改变未来的营养相互作用，从而对群落和生态系统功能产生级联效应。
