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 ...
