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Warmer springs mean less snow, fewer flowers in the Rockies
Date:3/5/2008

r that entire year. Without flowers, they cannot set seed and reproduce.

Inouye says the change happening here may be undetected by humans casually observing the area because these are all long-lived perennial plants. An individual sunflower, for instance, can live to be 50 or 75 years old.

But we find that these perennials are not producing enough seeds to make the next generation of plants, he says, and without new plants the transformations within plant and animal communities of this ecosystem could be quite intense.

Many insects such as the fruit flies known as tephritid flies, which eat the flowers seeds, seem to be plant specific, he points out, and so they may disappear, too if there are no flowers to produce seeds. Parasitoid wasps that feed on those flies will then feel the loss, as well. Grasshoppers also feast upon the flower petals. And, these plants are eaten by many kinds of large herbivores, including deer, elk, cows and sheep.

What will replace these colorful flowers? We dont know, says Inouye. But we know that many animals depend upon them, and so the outcome could be quite dramatic.

Inouye and his colleagues say that there is much work to be done on the topic of phenology, which is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events. These events are heavily influenced by environmental changes, especially seasonal variations in temperature and precipitation driven by weather and climate. There is even an important role to be played by citizen scientists, who can gather information for the National Phenology Networks new endeavor called Project Budburst.

In the future, we anticipate climate change will affect plants and animals in many ways, but information is needed on how those changes will play out for specific plants, says Inouye. Some, he says, may bloom sooner and others may not bloom at all. Some may become more prolific and others may die out completely. C
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Contact: Nadine Lymn
nadine@esa.org
202-833-8773
Ecological Society of America
Source:Eurekalert

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