Impact of climate warming on phenological asynchrony of plankton
dynamics across Europe
Abstract
Climate warming alters the seasonal timing of biological events. This
raises concerns that species-specific responses to warming may
de-synchronize co-evolved consumer-resource phenologies, resulting in
trophic mismatch and altered ecosystem dynamics. Here we explore effects
of warming on the temporal coherence of two key phenological events in
lakes across Europe: The onset of the phytoplankton spring bloom and the
spring/summer maximum of the grazer Daphnia. Simulation of 1,891,744
lake years revealed that, under the current climate, the phenological
delay between the two events varies greatly (20-190 days) across lake
types and geographic locations. Warming moves both phenological events
forward in time and can predictably lengthen or shorten the delay
between them by up to 60 days. Our findings expose large extant
variation in phenological synchrony of planktonic organisms, provide
quantitative predictions of its dependence on physical lake properties
and geographic location, and highlight research needs concerning its
ecological consequences.