Due to climate change, flowers are blooming in the UK a month earlier which could eventually lead to disruption in the ecosystem.
According to a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B "When plants flower too early, it is expected to have detrimental consequences for wildlife, agriculture, and gardeners".
In the mid-1980s, a similar situation happened due to climate change. The team of researchers of the University of Cambridge analyzed more than 400,000 records from the citizen science database.
In a project named Nature's Calendar researchers have been analyzing this changing pattern of seasons since the 18th century. The 400,000 records were of the first flowering dates of 406 different species of trees, shrubs, herbs, and climbers around the UK.
The team calculated the average first flowering dates in the periods 1752-1986 and 1986-2019 and compared them with monthly climate records. They found that average first flowering dates were almost a full month earlier than they were in 1752-1986.
According to Professor Ulf Bungten from Cambridge's Department of Geography " We can use a wide range of environmental datasheets to see how climate change is affecting species, but most records we have only consider one or a handful of species in a relatively small area. To understand what climate change is doing to our world, we need much larger datasheets that look at whole ecosystems over a long period".
This disruption will only result in an imbalance in the ecosystem. Researchers fear these changes would lead to agricultural losses. The pollination of the flowering plants will be affected.
Plant flowering influences animals for which pollen, nectar, fruits are important resources. According to scientists these changes have been termed as ecological(or phenological) mismatch which is when the lifecycles of species that have evolved together and depend on each other fall out of sync which could lead to disrupted migration patterns, species starvation, outbreaks of pest and disease and could even lead to extinction.
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Very informative.. Keep up