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      Climate change and unequal phenological changes across four trophic levels: constraints or adaptations?

      , , , ,  
      Journal of Animal Ecology
      Wiley

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          Abstract

          1. Climate change has been shown to affect the phenology of many organisms, but interestingly these shifts are often unequal across trophic levels, causing a mismatch between the phenology of organisms and their food. 2. We consider two alternative hypotheses: consumers are constrained to adjust sufficiently to the lower trophic level, or prey species react more strongly than their predators to reduce predation. We discuss both hypotheses with our analyses of changes in phenology across four trophic levels: tree budburst, peak biomass of herbivorous caterpillars, breeding phenology of four insectivorous bird species and an avian predator. 3. In our long-term study, we show that between 1988 and 2005, budburst advanced (not significantly) with 0.17 d yr(-1), while between 1985 and 2005 both caterpillars (0.75 d year(-1)) and the hatching date of the passerine species (range for four species: 0.36-0.50 d year(-1)) have advanced, whereas raptor hatching dates showed no trend. 4. The caterpillar peak date was closely correlated with budburst date, as were the passerine hatching dates with the peak caterpillar biomass date. In all these cases, however, the slopes were significantly less than unity, showing that the response of the consumers is weaker than that of their food. This was also true for the avian predator, for which hatching dates were not correlated with the peak availability of fledgling passerines. As a result, the match between food demand and availability deteriorated over time for both the passerines and the avian predators. 5. These results could equally well be explained by consumers' insufficient responses as a consequence of constraints in adapting to climate change, or by them trying to escape predation from a higher trophic level, or both. Selection on phenology could thus be both from matches of phenology with higher and lower levels, and quantifying these can shed new light on why some organisms do adjust their phenology to climate change, while others do not.

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          Most cited references2

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          Phenology of forest caterpillars and their host trees: the importance of synchrony.

          For many leaf-feeding herbivores, synchrony in phenology with their host plant is crucial as development outside a narrow phenological time window has severe fitness consequences. In this review, we link mechanisms, adaptation, and population dynamics within a single conceptual framework, needed for a full understanding of the causes and consequences of this synchrony. The physiological mechanisms underlying herbivore and plant phenology are affected by environmental cues, such as photoperiod and temperature, although not necessarily in the same way. That these different mechanisms lead to synchrony, even if there is spatial and temporal variation in plant phenology, is a result of the strong natural selection acting on the mechanism underlying herbivore phenology. Synchrony has a major impact on the population densities of leaf-feeding Lepidoptera, and years with a high synchrony may lead to outbreaks. Global climate change leads to a disruption of the synchrony between herbivores and their host plants, which may have major impacts for population viability if natural selection is insufficient to restore synchrony.
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            Predicting adaptation of phenology in response to climate change, an insect herbivore example

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              Author and article information

              Journal
              JANE
              Journal of Animal Ecology
              Wiley
              00218790
              13652656
              January 2009
              January 2009
              : 78
              : 1
              : 73-83
              Article
              10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01458.x
              18771506
              3ebaf69d-895e-4adf-bd60-769f39b8c88e
              © 2009

              http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/tdm_license_1.1

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