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Climate change is shifting the phenological timing, duration, and temporal overlap of interacting species in natural communities, reshaping temporal interaction networks worldwide. Despite much recent progress in documenting these phenological shifts, little is known about how the phenologies of species interactions are tracked across different life history stages. Here we analyze four key phenological traits and the pairwise interaction potential of nine amphibian species for the adult (calling/breeding) and subsequent larval (tadpole) stage at eight different sites over six years. We found few strong correlations among phenological traits within species, but the strength of these correlations varied across species. As a consequence, phenological trait combinations of both stages varied substantially across species without clear signs of multidimensional clustering, indicating a distinct and diverse range of species‐specific phenological strategies. Despite this considerable variation in the phenologies across species, the temporal overlap between species was largely preserved through the two life history stages. Further, we also detected significant correlations among the duration and temporal overlap of interactions with other species across stages in five species, demonstrating that temporal patterns of species interactions are mirrored across life history stages. For these species, these results indicate a strong tracking of phenologies and species interactions across life history stages even in species with complex life cycles where stages occupy completely different environments. This suggests that phenological shifts in one stage can impact the temporal dynamics and structure of interaction networks across developmental stages.
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Shifts in phenological distributions reshape interaction potential in natural communities
Abstract Climate change has changed the phenologies of species worldwide, but it remains unclear how these phenological changes will affect species interactions and the structure of natural communities. Using a novel approach to analyse long‐term data of 66 amphibian species pairs across eight communities, we demonstrate that phenological shifts can significantly alter the interaction potential of coexisting competitors. Importantly, these changes in interaction potential were mediated by non‐uniform, species‐specific shifts in entire phenological distributions and consequently could not be captured by metrics traditionally used to quantify phenological shifts. Ultimately, these non‐uniform shifts in phenological distributions increased the interaction potential for 25% of species pairs (and did not reduce interaction potential for any species pair), altering temporal community structure and potentially increasing interspecific competition. These results demonstrate the potential of phenological shifts to reshape temporal structure of natural communities, emphasising the importance of considering entire phenological distributions of natural populations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1655626
- PAR ID:
- 10061214
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ecology Letters
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 8
- ISSN:
- 1461-023X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 1143-1151
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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