Linze Inland River Basin Research Station, Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Linze Inland River Basin Research Station, Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2024 Mar 20;917:170458. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170458. Epub 2024 Jan 29.
Climate change has caused asynchronous phenological shifts between most plants and their pollinators, resulting in an earlier or later appearance of peak flowering relative to peak pollinator abundance. The fitness impact of these two mismatch patterns may not be simply equivalent, but the information has so far been limited. To explore how differently plant fitness responds to the distinct mismatch patterns, we conducted a seed-setting comparative study at the individual level in an alpine grassland community in the Qilian Mountains of China. By monitoring flowering abundance and insect visits, we measured the phenological matching relationship between plants and their key pollinators, and evaluated the impact of mismatches on plant productivity. We found that the pattern of "pollinator peaks earlier" accounted for a relatively high proportion in the natural community, with a significantly stronger fitness impact on plants than that of the "flower peaks earlier" pattern. The asymmetry in the fitness impacts between phenological mismatch patterns is related to the length of flowering period. Specially, the shorter the flowering duration, the greater the difference in influence between the two patterns. Our results suggest that plants with shorter flowering periods may be confronted with more severe pollination limitations if climate warming cause insects to forage further ahead. Therefore, the asymmetric effects of phenological mismatch patterns should be considered in phenological models to improve the predictive performance of plant responses to climate change.
气候变化导致大多数植物与其传粉者之间的物候期出现不同步，导致花期峰值相对于传粉者丰度峰值的出现时间提前或推迟。这两种不匹配模式的适应度影响可能并不简单等效，但到目前为止，相关信息有限。为了探究植物适应度对这两种明显不匹配模式的响应有何不同，我们在中国祁连山高寒草原群落中进行了个体水平的结实设置比较研究。通过监测开花丰度和昆虫访问，我们测量了植物与其关键传粉者之间的物候匹配关系，并评估了不匹配对植物生产力的影响。我们发现，“传粉者峰值更早”模式在自然群落中占比较高，对植物的适应度影响明显大于“花期峰值更早”模式。物候不匹配模式之间适应度影响的不对称性与花期持续时间的长短有关。具体而言，花期持续时间越短，两种模式之间的影响差异越大。我们的研究结果表明，如果气候变暖导致昆虫更早地觅食，花期较短的植物可能会面临更严重的传粉限制。因此，在物候模型中应考虑物候不匹配模式的不对称效应，以提高植物对气候变化响应的预测性能。
