Phenological variability between species of floodplain forests and the role of the pollinators

The impact of climate change on phenological timing is well-known and described in the scientific literature. Most papers agree that rising temperature accelerates the onset of spring phenological phases. Nevertheless, there is more significant disagreement in the synchronicity or asynchronicity of phenological trends of individual species. In this study, therefore, we will work with long-term phenological data that have been observed continuously in floodplain forests (and relate to herbs, shrubs, trees, and bird populations) from 1961 to the present. The observed plants and bird species showed statistically significant (p < 0.05) shifts in phenological terms to an earlier year. Still, the rate of the shift among the observed species differed. The most progressive shifts were detected for the herbs (2.3 days per decade), followed by the shrubs (2.2 days per decade), trees (1.4 days per decade), and finally, the bird species (also 1.4 days per decade). There are many changes in trends within the specific species group – e.g., quite a considerable variability was detected for herbs – the phenophase ´full flowering´ trend is moving between 1.3 and 3.3 days per decade. For this reason, we also include the role of pollinators within this study - bumblebees (Bombus) as a new input to the phenological observations to see if there is any asynchrony between these early spring species.

 

Acknowledgment: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (grant AdAgriF - Advanced methods of greenhouse gases emission reduction and sequestration in agriculture and forest landscape for climate change mitigation (CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004635).