An Environmental Article from All-Creatures.org

Plants and their pollinators are increasingly out of sync

From Jennie Durant, Grist.org
August 2024

As global temperatures rise and seasons shift, bees and other pollinators are missing critical connections with flowers and crops.

DeepGreen/Getty Images

For the past four years, plant biologist Elsa Godtfredsen has trekked to a subalpine meadow in Colorado to study the interactions between wildflowers and bumblebees. The pollinators buzz among fields of purple delphinium and columbine, an iconic image of spring in the Rocky Mountains.

Godtfredsen works at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, a research center set amid evergreens and jagged granite peaks in Gothic, Colorado. Each spring and summer, they track four species of wildflowers from bloom to seed set, using this data to model the impact of climate change on these plants and their pollinators.

“Subalpine and alpine ecosystems are changing rapidly,” Godtfredsen said. “We’re trying to see if these species can persist in ecosystems that are going to continue changing unless we see drastic shifts in policy.”

As winters get warmer, snow in alpine and subalpine regions melts earlier, causing a timing mismatch where flowers bloom before bumblebees emerge from diapause, or insect hibernation. Without enough pollinator visits, plants can’t make seeds and reproduce. That will leave fewer flowers for pollinators next spring — and future springs as well.

“We’re seeing a ubiquitous trend: Generally when snowmelt happens earlier, we see flowering earlier as well,” said Godtfredsen.

Scientists warn that these mountainous ecosystems foreshadow trends that other areas may soon experience, or in some cases, already face. Globally, spring is arriving progressively sooner. Flowers now bloom several weeks ahead of schedule in temperate forests in Japan and an average of 23 days earlier in the United States. Another study in the United Kingdom found that plants flower a month earlier on average.

Most animals and insects rely on temperature cues to start seasonal activities, like migrating, breeding, or emerging from hibernation. When those signals change due to warming temperatures or earlier snowmelt, it can lead to timing mismatches that threaten populations.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: August 29, 2024
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