Climate Change Could Shift Timing of Species’ Interactions

The alterations have been greater under rapidly-climbing global temperatures, suggesting key ecological relationships could be disrupted in the future.

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Butterflies are used in phenology and synchrony studies.WIKIMEDIA, JUDY GALLAGHERClimate change could be influencing the timing of species’ interactions, scientists report today (April 16) in PNAS.

Studies on shifts in phenological synchrony—the interactions of different species, such as the emergence of a butterfly and the flowering of its host plants—usually focus on one set of interacting species. But in the new study, Heather Kharouba of the University of Ottawa and her colleagues built a database that incorporated 27 studies of life-timing events of 54 interacting terrestrial and aquatic species pairs. The studies were done between 1951 and 2013. A meta-analysis of the results revealed that the timing of life events such as reproduction of individual species has changed substantially in recent decades, occurring an average of 4 days earlier per decade after 1981, compared with 2.7 days earlier per decade before 1981. Synchrony between interacting species—such as the butterfly and its ...

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Meet the Author

  • Ashley Yeager

    Ashley started at The Scientist in 2018. Before joining the staff, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, a writer at the Simons Foundation, and a web producer at Science News, among other positions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. Ashley edits the Scientist to Watch and Profile sections of the magazine and writes news, features, and other stories for both online and print.

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