How phenological tracking shapes species and communities in non‐stationary environments

Abstract

Climate change alters the environments of all species. Predicting species responses requires understanding how species track environmental change, and how such tracking shapes communities. Growing empirical evidence suggests that how species track phenologicallyhow an organism shifts the timing of major biological events in response to the environmentis linked to species performance and community structure. Such research tantalizingly suggests a potential framework to predict the winners and losers of climate change, and the future communities we can expect. But developing this framework requires far greater efforts to ground empirical studies of phenological tracking in relevant ecological theory. Here we review the concept of phenological tracking in empirical studies and through the lens of coexistence theory to show why a community-level perspective is critical to accurate predictions with climate change. While much current theory for tracking ignores the importance of a multi-species context, basic community assembly theory predicts that competition will drive variation in tracking and trade-offs with other traits. We highlight how existing community assembly theory can help understand tracking in stationary and non-stationary systems. But major advances in predicting the species-and community-level consequences of climate change will require advances in theoretical and empirical studies. We outline a path forward built on greater efforts to integrate priority effects into modern coexistence theory, improved empirical estimates of multivariate environmental change, and clearly defined estimates of phenological tracking and its underlying environmental cues.

Current and lagged climate affects phenology across diverse taxonomic groups

“…Climate can strongly influence phenology (the timing of life-history events) by speeding up or delaying events such as emergence, peak activity and reproduction [1]. In turn, phenology can influence individual fitness [2,3], species interactions [4,5] and ecosystem function [6].…”

Changes in phenology can alter patterns of natural selection: the joint evolution of germination time and postgermination traits

“…When phenological transitions occur in response to environmental cues of future conditions, phenology can determine the environment experienced by subsequent developmental stages. Consequently, phenology can act as a form of habitat selection or environmental tracking (Wolkovich & Donahue, 2021). This process is analogous to spatial habitat selection, in which organisms move through space and use cues to select appropriate environments; however, phenology has less frequently been studied within the conceptual framework of habitat tracking and its consequences (Donohue, 2003; Cleland et al ., 2012; D'Aguillo et al ., 2019).…”

What's going to be on the menu with global environmental changes?

“…Following the environmental impacts of the Industrial Revolution, mammals occupy different climate niches, a shift with broad demographic and ecological consequences (Pineda‐Munoz et al, 2021). Although generalist consumers experience reduced vulnerability, all species must first track the availability of resources in dynamic environments before they mediate interactions to gain access (Abrahms et al, 2021; Wolkovich & Donahue, 2021). Temporal and spatial variation in primary production highlights sensitivities to environmental conditions as evident with mean annual precipitation corresponding to increased primary production across the conterminous United States (Maurer et al, 2020).…”