Plant and animal species phenology, the timing of natural events, have been one of the mechanisms most affected by current climate change. Within this realm, trends taking place in the last few decades of global warming are being used to make forecasts into the future. However, they are limited in their scope as they are only available for a few species in one or a few locations.
Here we present an analysis of the phenological response (spring, summer and fall) to climate variation of several plant and animal species, whose phenological events were monitored at 176 meteorological stations in Japan and South Korea from 1953 to 2005. For that we developed a hierarchical Bayesian model to examine the complex interactions of temperature, site effects, and latitude on phenology.
Results/Conclusions
Results show species-specific variation in the magnitude and the direction of their responses to increasing temperature, which also differ from site to site. At most sites the differences in phenology among species are forecast to become greater with warmer temperatures. Primary producers’ phenology is highly linked to changes in temperature, while animal species show a wider range of responses to increasing temperature. Our results clearly demonstrate that it is difficult to generalize from one site to another because of differences that exist between the phenological responses of individual species and sites. Large datasets that span broad geographic areas will aid scientists to improve predictions of how phenological responses and ecological relationships will change in the future.
