Abstract
The study of phylogenetic conservatism in alpine plant phenology is critical for predicting climate change impacts; currently we have a poor understanding of how phylogeny and climate factors interactively influence plant phenology. Therefore, we explored the influence of phylogeny and climate factors on flowering phenology in alpine meadows. For two different types of alpine plant communities, we recorded phenological data, including flowering peak, first flower budding, first flowering, first fruiting and the flowering end for 62 species over the course of 5 years (2008–2012). From sequences in two plastid regions, we constructed phylogenetic trees. We used Blomberg’s K and Pagel’s lambda to assess the phylogenetic signal in phenological traits and species’ phenological responses to climate factors. We found a significant phylogenetic signal in the date of all reproductive phenological events and in species’ phenological responses to weekly day length and temperature. The number of species in flower was strongly associated with the weekly day lengths and followed by the weekly temperature prior to phenological activity. Based on phylogenetic eigenvector regression (PVR) analysis, we found a highly shared influence of phylogeny and climate factors on alpine species flowering phenology. Our results suggest the phylogenetic conservatism in both flowering and fruiting phenology may depend on the similarity of responses to external environmental cues among close relatives.
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Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China granted to GD (41430749). MWC wishes to acknowledge support from the endowed TD Chair of Urban Forest Conservation and Biology and from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (#386151). We thank Xianhui Zhou for providing climate data; Kun Liu and Wei Qi for their species identification; Jingyao Sun, Qin Yu and Jie Wu for helping us with phenological data collection. We also thank Editor Hermann Heilmeier and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript. This experiment complies with the current laws of People’s Republic of China, where it was performed.
Author contribution statement
LL, ZL, PJ and GC conducted fieldwork. LL generated sequencing data, performed phylogenetic analyses and statistical analyses. LL, MWC and LSJ wrote the manuscript. MWC provided analytical advice. GD conceived and designed the experiments.
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Communicated by Hermann Heilmeier.
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Li, L., Li, Z., Cadotte, M.W. et al. Phylogenetic conservatism and climate factors shape flowering phenology in alpine meadows. Oecologia 182, 419–428 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3666-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3666-6