ArticleAnnals of botany2025
Better soon than never: climate change induces strong phenological reassembly in the flowering of a Mediterranean shrub community.
Article in Annals of botany, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Meta-analyses of reproductive changes in angiosperm populations in response to elevation reveal a lack of global patterns.Annals of botany · 2025Pooled it
- Untangling the Complexity of Climate Change Effects on Plant Reproductive Traits and Pollinators: A Systematic Global Synthesis.Global change biology · 2025Pooled it
- Phenological responses to temperature are similar across spatial and temporal gradients - lessons learned from European long-term data.International journal of biometeorology · 2026Article
- Rapid Surveys Reveal Temporal Variation in Flowering Community Phenology in a Great Basin Desert Ecosystem.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Sown Summer-Blooming Wildflowers as a Tool to Support Pollinator Biodiversity During Dry Periods in Mediterranean Agroecosystems.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Retrospective phenology in western Mediterranean plants: revealing climate change patterns through herbarium specimens.AoB PLANTS · 2025Article
- Evaluation of the Global White Lupin Collection Reveals Significant Associations Between HomologousInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Warm Spring Days are Related to Shorter Durations of Reproductive Phenophases for Understory Forest Herbs.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Effectiveness of freezing temperatures on dormancy release of temperate woody species.Annals of botany · 2024Article
- Predictions of species distributions based only on models estimating future climate change are not reliable.Scientific reports · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsFlowering is a key process in the life cycle of a plant. Climate change is shifting flowering phenologies in the Northern Hemisphere, but studies with long data series at the community level are scarce, especially those considering the consequences of phenological changes for emerging ecological interactions. In the Mediterranean region, the effects of climate change are stronger than the global average and there is an urgent need to understand how biodiversity will be affected in this area.
methodsIn this study, we investigated how the entire flowering phenology of a community comprising 51 perennial species from the south of the Iberian Peninsula changed from the decade of the 1980s to the 2020s. Furthermore, we have analysed the consequences of these changes for flowering order and co-flowering patterns. KEY
resultsWe have found that the flowering phenology of the community has advanced by ~20 days, which is coherent with the increasing temperatures related to climate change. Individual species have generally advanced their entire flowering phenology (start and end) and increased their flowering duration. The early flowering has resulted in a re-organization of the flowering order of the community and generated new co-flowering assemblages of species, with a slight trend towards an increase of shared flowering time among species.
conclusionsThe advanced flowering phenology and changes in flowering duration reported here were of unprecedented magnitude, showcasing the extreme effects of climate change on Mediterranean ecosystems. Furthermore, the effects were not similar among species, which could be attributed to differences in sensitivities of environmental cues for flowering. One consequence of these changes in flowering times is ecological mismatches, indicated by changes in the flowering order and co-flowering between decades. This new scenario might lead to new competitive or facilitative interactions and to the loss or gain of pollinators.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.