Geographical bias constrains global knowledge of phenological change
Nathalie Butt
School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Qld 4072, Australia and Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK. Email: n.butt@uq.edu.au
Pacific Conservation Biology 25(4) 345-347 https://doi.org/10.1071/PC18073
Submitted: 20 September 2018 Accepted: 16 December 2018 Published: 15 January 2019
Abstract
Climate change is already driving shifts in phenology, the timing of life-history events such as flowering, fruiting, egg-laying, birth, and migration, and this is set to increase. Although climate change is happening, and will continue to happen, globally, most of our ecological knowledge around its potential impacts on phenology is derived from temperate areas and ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere, and information from the Southern Hemisphere is greatly lacking. This would not be a problem if biomes, ecosystems, species assemblages and species were the same in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, but as they, in fact, differ across many factors and scales, understanding gained from one hemisphere is not necessarily applicable to the other.
Additional keywords: biodiversity conservation, climate change, ecosystem cascades, Southern Hemisphere, tree phenology, tropical forests
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