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Ecology |
2Biology Department, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA; 3Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130-3500 USA
Received for publication October 30, 2003. Accepted for publication April 1, 2004.
| ABSTRACT |
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Key Words: Arnold Arboretum climate change flowering times herbarium specimens phenology temperature
| INTRODUCTION |
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To supplement this small number of specialized historical records, biological collections from museums, herbaria, zoos, botanical gardens, and research stations may provide data for examining patterns of response to changing climate. Data from such collections has many advantages over the more conventionally used historical data sets:
If records from these collections could be used to detect patterns of species response to climate change, we would have a greatly expanded range of data for research.
The purpose of this project was to test whether herbarium records could be used to detect long-term changes in flowering times and the responses of numerous species to changes in springtime temperature. As far as we know, this is the first attempt to use museum specimens for this purpose. To accomplish this, we compared the current flowering dates of marked individuals with their past flowering dates using herbarium specimens collected over the last century at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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During the spring and summer of 2003, the same two people observed these individually numbered plants weekly between 13 April and 14 July. The observers determined the current peak flowering date and duration of flowering for each plant. Plants were recorded as being in one of four stages: not flowering, almost in full flower, full flower, or past full flower. A plant in full flower was defined as having at least 50% of its buds in full bloom and as being suitable for making a herbarium specimen. Once a plant was recorded as past flower, it was no longer observed.
A single Julian date of full flower was determined for each plant in 2003, although this date could have missed the true flowering peak by 34 d due to sampling just once a week. In cases when full flowering was observed on multiple dates, the mean of the Julian dates for those days was used. Once the date of full flowering was determined for each plant in 2003, these dates were compared with flowering dates based on the herbarium records. For each record, the Julian date of peak flowering in 2003 was subtracted from the Julian date of the past flowering date to estimate a change in plant flowering dates. In effect, the flowering dates of 2003 were used as a standard against which flowering times in other years were compared. The spring (February through May) of 2003 was colder than any previous year since 1967 and was more typical of temperatures early in the 20th century. Using these changes in flowering dates for individual plants, we used multiple regression analysis to examine how flowering times across all species have changed over time and how this change compares to the trend of warming spring temperatures in Boston. We estimated the following equation:
FT = + B1
Temp + B2
Time + µ, where
FT,
Temp, and
Time are the difference between the flowering time, temperature, and years, respectively, in 2003 and a past year in which a herbarium specimen was collected. is a constant, B1 and B2 are regression coefficients, and µ is a normally distributed random error term.
Over the last 100 yr, Boston has experienced an annual temperature increase of 1.5°C (Fig. 1), which has been due to regional climate change and the urban heat island effect (New England Regional Assessment, 2001
). We hypothesized that, given this warming trend, analysis of herbarium samples would demonstrate that plants are responding to a warmer climate by flowering earlier. We believed that the main drawback of using herbarium samples to determine peak flowering date would be the deviation between the dates of collection and peak flowering; that is, people in the past might have collected specimens early or late in the flowering season, obscuring trends in flowering times. We investigated this area further in our analysis.
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| RESULTS |
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In addition to the trend toward earlier flowering over time, the herbarium records demonstrate that plant flowering times are highly responsive to changes in average temperatures in the 4 mo (mean temperature in February, March, April, and May) before and during flowering (P < 0.001; Fig. 3). Flowering times are sensitive to relatively small shifts in temperature, advancing 3.9 d per 1°C increase in mean spring temperature (when controlling for time). This rate of advancement agrees with the findings of other studies, which have observed flowering times to be 210 d earlier per 1°C increase in temperature (Fitter et al., 1995
; Sparks and Carey, 1995
; Sparks et al., 2000
; Cayan et al., 2001
). Given that temperatures in February through May have warmed approximately 1.5°C over the past 100 yr (Fig. 1), warming temperatures seem to have caused the Arboretum plants to flower approximately 5 d earlier over the past 100 yr. The multiple regression results also showed that time (after controlling for changes in temperature) showed a significant relationship with flowering time, with plants flowering earlier over time (P < 0.001).
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| DISCUSSION |
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We believe that four primary factors contributed to our ability to show this response. First, the large number of samples used from the Arboretum herbarium (372 specimens) appears to have overcome any possible error introduced by collection dates that vary from peak flowering date. Second, the samples come from one relatively homogenous locationthat is, the Arboretum grounds contain no significant shifts in elevation, and land use has remained the same. These characteristics minimized sampling errors that might have hidden the effects of climate change. Third, we were able to compare past flowering times from herbarium samples with the current flowering time of the same plants that are still living on the Arboretum grounds. Thus, we were able to observe the flowering phenology of each individual plant for one field season (2003). That one year of data became our reference year, to which we compared the historical flowering times and from which we were able to establish trends in flowering date over time and temperature. By using tagged plants, we were able to eliminate the variation in flowering time among plants of the same species caused by genetic and environmental variation.
Fourth, our study benefited from the excess warming in Boston caused by the urban heat-island effect. Between 1885 and the present, the time covered by our study, the mean annual temperature of the rural areas of Massachusetts warmed by 0.7°C (Keim et al., 2003
), while the city of Boston warmed by 1.5°C, as the city surfaces were covered by more buildings and paved surfaces. The extra warming almost certainly made the trend toward earlier flowering time in Boston more visible than it would have been in other, less urbanized areas of the United States (Roetzer et al., 2000
). Such earlier flowering has similarly been noted in other urban centers, such as the Washington, D.C., area (Shetler and Wiser, 1987
). However, the large sample size used in our study would have likely allowed us to detect earlier flowering with even less warming than the 1.5°C warming experienced by Boston.
When we used multiple regression to control for temperature, plants were still flowering earlier over time. Therefore, factors other than temperature at the Boston weather station were also affecting flowering times. These factors could include temperature in other months of the year and other climatic variables, such as rainfall and humidity. Local conditions within and around the Arboretum may also affect flowering times. For example, increased paving of roads within the Arboretum and construction of buildings on adjacent land may have caused localized warming. Finally, if plants were flowering over a longer period as they increased in size and age and were consistently collected at the beginning of their flowering period, there could be a false trend toward earlier flowering over time. Further investigations are needed in order to determine the relative importance of these factors.
Our results suggest that other museum and herbarium collections could be utilized to measure the effects of climate change on phenological events. We believe that many such intensive collections exist at other institutions. Collections may also exist in a much more dispersed form, with samples having been collected from one location by many individuals and now being held at various storage sites. Certain localities with unusual concentrations of endemic or rare species have been intensively collected by biologists at many periods in the past, especially mountain peaks, islands, swamps, lake shores, and dunes. For example, biologists have collected extensively from many isolated natural arease.g., the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the Florida Everglades, the northern tip of Newfoundland, and Stewart Island off the southern coast of New Zealand.
If information on flowering time from one of these locations could be gathered into one data set, an analysis could reflect the responses of native species to climate change. We believe that many such data sets from around the world could be assembled, covering the last 100150 yr. Using such data, analyses could allow scientists to clarify the extent and character of local variation in natural responses to climate change. Furthermore, this would improve predictions of the effects that future climate change might have on biological communities. Using herbarium specimens from the Arnold Arboretum and 1 yr of observation, we have been able to demonstrate a clear pattern of earlier flowering over time and earlier flowering in response to warmer spring temperatures.
| FOOTNOTES |
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