Flowers, bees and shifting seasons: how to adapt when Nature’s calendar goes out of sync in a warming world.

Beskrivning

Changes in the seasonal timing of biological events (phenology) belong to the most
well documented effects of global warming. Emblematic examples include advanced
or prolonged periods of flowering and pollinator activity. While many species closely
track advancing seasons by adjusting their phenologies, others show little or no
response, potentially causing key events in their annual life cycles, such as
reproduction, to become mistimed in relation to mutualistic partners, food resources
or abiotic conditions. The fitness consequences of temporal mismatches appear
variable and species-specific however, making it difficult to assess the adaptive value
of observed phenological responses. In this talk, I will present a series of eco-
evolutionary models addressing how climate change may influence the optimal timing
of growth and reproduction in herbaceous plants and annual social insects (e.g.
bumblebees). As I will discuss, accounting for competitive interactions and life-
history trade-offs yields surprising predictions, for example, that a certain degree of
reproductive mismatch might be expected from evolution, that genetic adaptation to
track advancing seasons may reduce population sizes and that in some cases it even
makes sense to reproduce later in the year when spring starts earlier. Eco-evolutionary
modelling thus offers interesting insights into the adaptive significance of changes in
Nature’s calendar and into how shifting seasons may have strong, weak or
idiosyncratic effects on population trends.

Period	2019 nov. 21
Vid	Imperial College London, Storbritannien