Monday, 6 December 2010

More evidence of earlier flowering times under climate change

A UK-based paper has recently put together a 'meta-analysis' of data from the past 200 years to show that British Flowering plants have been flowering 2-12 days earlier over the last 25 years than at any time in the past two centuries, on average.  Although this doesn't contrast natives and invasives (it would be interesting to know if that would be possible with this data), it complements the first paper we reviewed for F1000 on the Thoreau's wood data (Concord, Massachusetts (USA)) that demonstrated evidence of earlier flowering dates for both natives and non-natives, however with non-natives flowering 11 days earlier on average than natives over the last 100 year.  I would be curious to know if a similar study could be conducted with the UK data by Amano et al. to that of Willis et al. to provide further evidence for the interesting findings in that paper (see our review here). 

T. Amano, R.J. Smithers, T.H. Sparks and W.J. Sutherland (2010) A 250-year index of first flowering dates and its response to temperature changes Proc. R. Soc. B vol. 277 no. 1693, 2451-2457 

A review of the Amano et al paper for F1000 by Sandra Knapp can be read here, she rated this paper 'exceptional': Faculty of 1000: 2010. F1000.com/6560956

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