Linking plant phenology to conservation biology

Morellato, Leonor Patrícia Cerdeira; Alberton, Bruna; Alvarado, Swanni T.; Borges, Bernardo Melo Montes Nogueira; Buisson, Élise; Camargo, Maria Gabriela Gutierrez; Cancian, Leonardo Farage; Carstensen, Daniel; Escobar, Diego Fernando Escobar; Leite, Patrícia T.P.; Mendoza, Irene; Rocha, Nathália Miranda Walter Bretas; Soares, Natalia Costa; Silva, Thiago Sanna Freire; Staggemeier, Vanessa Graziele; Streher, Annia Susin; Vargas, Betânia Cunha; Peres, Carlos A.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2015.12.033

Cited by 318 publications

(294 citation statements)

References 150 publications

(233 reference statements)

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“…Reduced net primary productivity will probably result in a landscape‐level drop in tree flowering and fruiting, reducing the overall food supply for parrots and other frugivores throughout the tropics (Morellato et al . ). Such long‐term reductions in food supply could slowly reduce breeding success and result in a sustained threat to psittacine populations, even those located in intact tropical forests.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Food availability and breeding season as predictors of geophagy in Amazonian parrots

Brightsmith

Hobson

Martínez

2017

Ibis

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Geophagy, the consumption of soil, is common in many species, but the drivers of geophagy are not well understood. The best-studied example of avian geophagy is the parrots of the western Amazon Basin, but even here, there is debate over what drives the behaviour. There are two possible explanations: (1) extra nutritional demands of reproduction drive an increase in geophagy, which would predict that geophagy should be highest during the breeding season, and (2) consumption of naturally toxic plant foods increases the need for the toxin protection effects of soil, which would predict that geophagy should be highest when food availability is low and animals are forced to consume more toxic foods. We used long-term data from lowland Amazonia to compare seasonal fluctuations in rainfall, food availability, parrot breeding and parrot geophagy, and conducted novel tests of these hypotheses. Our analyses of annual patterns suggested that seasonal changes in rainfall drive plant fruiting, the resulting food availability patterns drive the timing of parrot breeding, and breeding drives seasonal patterns of geophagy. Surprisingly, chicks of the largest psittacine species fledged as food supplies approach their annual lows, suggesting that future climatic changes that alter peaks in food availability could have unexpected impacts on the reproduction of large psittacines in this system. Our tests found no evidence to support the toxin-protection hypothesis. Instead, we found that the peak of geophagy occurred during species' breeding seasons, which strongly supports the supplemental nutrients hypothesis. Our findings join a growing body of biochemical, physiological, behavioural, ecological and biogeographical evidence suggesting that a need for sodium is driving soil consumption in this classic model system of avian geophagy.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Food availability and breeding season as predictors of geophagy in Amazonian parrots

Brightsmith

Hobson

Martínez

2017

Ibis

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“…Thus, phenological reassembly could have trophic implications and conservation repercussions (Morellato et al. ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate drives phenological reassembly of a mountain wildflower meadow community

Theobald

Breckheimer

HilleRisLambers

2017

Ecology

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Spatial community reassembly driven by changes in species abundances or habitat occupancy is a well-documented response to anthropogenic global change, but communities can also reassemble temporally if the environment drives differential shifts in the timing of life events across community members. Much like spatial community reassembly, temporal reassembly could be particularly important when critical species interactions are temporally concentrated (e.g., plant-pollinator dynamics during flowering). Previous studies have documented species-specific shifts in phenology driven by climate change, implying that temporal reassembly, a process we term "phenological reassembly," is likely. However, few studies have documented changes in the temporal co-occurrence of community members driven by environmental change, likely because few datasets of entire communities exist. We addressed this gap by quantifying the relationship between flowering phenology and climate for 48 co-occurring subalpine wildflower species at Mount Rainier (Washington, USA) in a large network of plots distributed across Mt. Rainier's steep environmental gradients; large spatio-temporal variability in climate over the 6 yr of our study (including the earliest and latest snowmelt year on record) provided robust estimates of climate-phenology relationships for individual species. We used these relationships to examine changes to community co-flowering composition driven by 'climate change analog' conditions experienced at our sites in 2015. We found that both the timing and duration of flowering of focal species was strongly sensitive to multiple climatic factors (snowmelt, temperature, and soil moisture). Some consistent responses emerged, including earlier snowmelt and warmer growing seasons driving flowering phenology earlier for all focal species. However, variation among species in their phenological sensitivities to these climate drivers was large enough that phenological reassembly occurred in the climate change analog conditions of 2015. An unexpected driver of phenological reassembly was fine-scale variation in the direction and magnitude of climatic change, causing phenological reassembly to be most apparent early and late in the season and in topographic locations where snow duration was shortest (i.e., at low elevations and on ridges in the landscape). Because phenological reassembly may have implications for many types of ecological interactions, failing to monitor community-level repercussions of species-specific phenological shifts could underestimate climate change impacts.

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“…Global climate change has renewed the interest in the study of plant phenology, which is currently considered a multidisciplinary science that unites biometeorology, ecology and evolutionary biology [3]. Furthermore, phenological studies constitute the basis for understanding the dynamics of resource availability for populations of many animal species in tropical forests [4], and are important tools for biodiversity monitoring, management and conservation [5,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tree Community Phenodynamics and Its Relationship with Climatic Conditions in a Lowland Tropical Rainforest

Pires

Marino

Silva

et al. 2018

Forests

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Abstract:The timing, duration, magnitude and synchronicity of plant life cycles are fundamental aspects of community dynamics and ecosystem functioning, and information on phenodynamics is essential for accurate vegetation classification and modeling. Here, we recorded the vegetative and reproductive phenodynamics of 479 individuals belonging to 182 tree species monthly over two years in a lowland Atlantic Forest in southeastern Brazil, and assessed the relationship between local climatic conditions and the occurrence and intensity of phenophases. We found a constant but low intensity of occurrence of both leaf fall and leaf flush with respect to canopy cover, resulting in an evergreen cover throughout the year. The timing of the reproductive phenophases was irregular between the two years of observation, and their amplitude was low. In addition, flowering and fruiting phenograms of activity, intensity and intensity corrected by the basal area did not overlap. These results suggest that a combination of phenological records and community-structure parameters allows for the obtainment of more accurate estimates of resource availability over time. We found that differences in growing degree-days (GDD), photoperiod and precipitation over time were related to temporal variation in leaf fall, leaf flush and flowering, with a large consistency in responses across tree species in this lowland Atlantic Forest. Moreover, there was only a weak relationship between climatic conditions and the dynamics of fruit formation and ripening, which were more strongly related to flowering phenodynamics, which is suggestive of indirect effects of climatic conditions on fruiting. Finally, the association we found between the number of days with precipitation and leaf fall dynamics agrees with the view that the greater potential for extreme events may impair plant growth in tropical forests. This reinforces the growing concerns regarding the risk of ecological collapse of tropical forests due to fragmentation and global climate change.

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Linking plant phenology to conservation biology

Cited by 318 publications

References 150 publications

Food availability and breeding season as predictors of geophagy in Amazonian parrots

Food availability and breeding season as predictors of geophagy in Amazonian parrots

Climate drives phenological reassembly of a mountain wildflower meadow community

Tree Community Phenodynamics and Its Relationship with Climatic Conditions in a Lowland Tropical Rainforest

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