The Phenology Handbook - USA National Phenology Network

The fingerprint of climate change
These shifts in geographic range and phenology are what scientists call the “fingerprint of climate change.” What
at first appears to be a situation where a species is accommodating or “adapting” to climate change by altering
the pace and duration of its annual cycle may actually be a risk-filled response — phenological schedules are
changing rapidly and at different rates for co-dependent species such as plants and pollinators. There is an increasing
number of reports in recent years of population crashes in the wild due to asynchronous responses to
climate change among co-dependent species, but we are only beginning to learn how widespread they are and
in how many different kinds of organisms they occur.
One consequence of asynchronous phenological responses to climate change among interacting species
The Dutch Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) is a small passerine bird that migrates from Western Africa
to Europe each spring. Upon its arrival at its northern breeding grounds it consumes caterpillars. The caterpillars
have been responding to warmer spring temperatures by emerging as adults earlier in the spring,
but some Flycatcher populations have not migrated earlier to keep pace. These mistimed Flycatcher populations
have been in steep decline in recent years because of the asynchrony of their migration phenology
with the phenology of their food source at its breeding grounds.
Photo freely available from Aelwyn and the Wikimedia Project.
CC-BY-SA terms of usage available at www.wikimedia.org
Visser, ME, C. Both, and MM Lambrechts. 2004. Global climate change leads to mistimed avian reproduction. Advances in Ecological
Research 35: 89-110.
Durant, J. M., D. O Hjermann, G. Ottersen, and NC Stenseth. 2007. Climate and the match or mismatch between predator requirements
and resource availability. Climate Research 33: 271-283.
20