Record-breaking early flowering in the eastern United States

Flowering times are well-documented indicators of the ecological effects of climate change and are linked to numerous ecosystem processes and trophic interactions. Dozens of studies have shown that flowering times for many spring-flowering plants have become earlier as a result of recent climate cha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-01, Vol.8 (1), p.e53788
Main Authors: Ellwood, Elizabeth R, Temple, Stanley A, Primack, Richard B, Bradley, Nina L, Davis, Charles C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology
Biometeorology
Climate change
Climate Change - statistics & numerical data
Climate effects
Earth Sciences
Ecological effects
Ecology
Ecosystem biology
Ecosystems
Environmental changes
Evolution & development
Flowering
Flowering plants
Flowers & plants
Flowers - growth & development
Global temperature changes
Phenology
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Physiological aspects
Plant species
Plants - classification
Records & achievements
Spring temperatures
Statistics as Topic
Studies
Trophic relationships
United States
Vaccinium corymbosum
Writers
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Summary:Flowering times are well-documented indicators of the ecological effects of climate change and are linked to numerous ecosystem processes and trophic interactions. Dozens of studies have shown that flowering times for many spring-flowering plants have become earlier as a result of recent climate change, but it is uncertain if flowering times will continue to advance as temperatures rise. Here, we used long-term flowering records initiated by Henry David Thoreau in 1852 and Aldo Leopold in 1935 to investigate this question. Our analyses demonstrate that record-breaking spring temperatures in 2010 and 2012 in Massachusetts, USA, and 2012 in Wisconsin, USA, resulted in the earliest flowering times in recorded history for dozens of spring-flowering plants of the eastern United States. These dramatic advances in spring flowering were successfully predicted by historical relationships between flowering and spring temperature spanning up to 161 years of ecological change. These results demonstrate that numerous temperate plant species have yet to show obvious signs of physiological constraints on phenological advancement in the face of climate change.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0053788