Accelerating flowering phenology drives community-wide negative effects
on plant fecundity
Abstract
The timing of life history events is being altered by climate change and
other anthropogenic environmental changes, with potential functional
consequences. Such changes may be particularly important in mutualisms,
such as plant-pollinator interactions, where timing mismatches can
impact fitness in both plants and pollinators. Numerous studies have
examined how changes in flowering phenology could impact the seed set of
individual species, yet it is the changes to relative fitness among
species that shape coexistence and community composition. To understand
how phenological change can affect plant community seed set, we
conducted a large-scale snowmelt acceleration experiment to advance
flowering phenology in eight montane meadow communities across two
valleys in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA. Each snowmelt
acceleration plot (10 m x 14 m) was paired with an adjacent control plot
without snowmelt manipulation (16 plots total). In six plots and their
adjacent controls, we measured how phenological change altered the
fecundity of eight co-occurring plant species, evaluating pollen
limitation in five species using hand pollination treatments. Although
accelerating flowering phenology resulted in lower overall fecundity and
greater pollen limitation in the examined assemblage of focal species,
these changes occurred in different directions depending on the species.
Species-dependent responses were also reflected in a significant change
in the relative proportions of seeds produced by different plants. Our
results suggest potential impacts on future plant community composition
resulting from early snowmelt, and underscore the importance of studying
the impacts of phenological change at a community level.