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PHENOLOGICAL SHIFTS

Great tit response to climate change

Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 807–808 (2021)Cite this article

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While earlier reproduction in a great tit population is expected to help with warmer springs, oak tree health seems to influence their ability to modulate their breeding period.

One of the main responses to climate change observed in wild organisms is phenological change1 through phenotypic plasticity2,3,4, in which biological rhythms are shifted, without genetic changes, due to warmer temperature. Environmentally induced modulation of life-history events may allow adaptive response to rapid climate change. However, the consequences of climate upheavals on the efficiency of plasticity in an altered habitat are still poorly understood5. Several facets of the environment — such as photoperiod, precipitation and temperature6,7 — influence phenology in a multi-dimensional way. By disrupting long-standing relationships between those environmental drivers, climate change may cause phenological plasticity to produce maladapted phenotypes in the new conditions. In addition to abiotic components, phenological changes in a given species may be driven by other species with which it interacts, inducing complex phenological entanglements through trophic levels8. Utilizing an exceptional long-term study in Wytham Woods, UK, Ella F. Cole and collaborators9 explore the consequences of ecological interactions on the birds’ ability to respond to climate change in the seminal tritrophic system: great tit (Parus major)–caterpillar (for example, the winter moth, Opheroptera brumata)–tree (for example, oak, Quercus robur). The authors use advanced statistical analyses applied on a longitudinal data set spanning sixty years to show how small-scale spatial variation of oak health influenced the phenological changes in the great tit over the years, and discuss how this change is related to climate change.

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Fig. 1: Great tit (Parus major).

Stephan Tillo

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre d’Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation (CESCO), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

    Suzanne Bonamour

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  1. Suzanne Bonamour
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Correspondence to Suzanne Bonamour.

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Bonamour, S. Great tit response to climate change. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 807–808 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01160-0

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