Phenological shifts of abiotic events, producers and consumers across a continent

Ongoing climate change can shift organism phenology in ways that vary depending on species, habitats and climate factors studied. To probe for large-scale patterns in associated phenological change, we use 70,709 observations from six decades of systematic monitoring across the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Among 110 phenological events related to plants, birds, insects, amphibians and fungi, we find a mosaic of change, defying simple predictions of earlier springs, later autumns and stronger changes at higher latitudes and elevations. Site mean temperature emerged as a strong predictor of local phenology, but the magnitude and direction of change varied with trophic level and the relative timing of an event. Beyond temperature-associated variation, we uncover high variation among both sites and years, with some sites being characterized by disproportionately long seasons and others by short ones. Our findings emphasize concerns regarding ecosystem integrity and highlight the difficulty of predicting climate change outcomes.
The work was financially supported by the Academy of Finland, grants 250243 (O.O.), 284601 (O.O.), 309581 (O.O.); the European Research Council, ERC Starting Grant 205905 (O.O.) and Synergy Grant 856506 – LIFEPLAN (to O.O. and T.R.); Nordic Environment Finance Corporation Grant (O.O.); Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation Grant (O.O., T.R., M.H., L.A.); University of Helsinki HiLIFE Fellow Grant 2017–2020 (O.O.); and the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence Funding Scheme (223257) to O.O. via Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics; the Kone Foundation 44-6977 (M.D.) and 55-14839 (G.T.); a Spanish Ramon y Cajal grant RYC-2014-16263 (M.D.); the Federal Budget for the Forest Research Institute of Karelian Research Centre Russian Academy of Sciences 220-2017-0003, 0220-2017-0005 (L.V., S.S. and J.K.); the Russian Foundation for Basic Research Grant 16-08-00510 (L.K.), and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation 0017-2019-0009 (Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences) (N.I., M. Shashkov).