Tracking phenological distributions and interaction potential across life stages

Climate change is shifting the phenological timing, duration, and temporal overlap of interacting species in natural communities, reshaping temporal interaction networks worldwide. Despite much recent progress in documenting these phenological shifts, little is known about how the phenologies of species interactions are tracked across different life-history stages. Here we analyze four key phenological traits and the pairwise interaction potential of nine amphibian species for the adult (calling/breeding) and subsequent larval (tadpole) stage at eight different sites over six years. We found few strong correlations among phenological traits within species, but the strength of these correlations varied across species. As a consequence, phenological trait combinations of both stages varied substantially across species without clear signs of multidimensional clustering, indicating a distinct and diverse range of species-specific phenological strategies. Despite this considerable variation ..., Study system
Studying the phenology of amphibian communities has several advantages and permits a highly sensitive and reliable approach to linking phenological distributions to competitive interactions. First, timing and duration of amphibian phenophases (life history stages) respond to tractable climatic cues like rainfall, temperature, and air pressure, but which cues are most important varies across species (Blankenhorn 1972, Pechmann et al. 1989, Kopp and Eterovick 2006, Saenz et al. 2006). Between-year fluctuations in weather thus precipitate some of the strongest species-specific phenological shifts of any taxa (Blaustein et al. 2001, Forchhammer et al. 1998, Oseen and Wassersug 2002, Parmesan 2007, Saenz et al. 2006). Secondly, amphibian species exhibit diverse life-history strategies, the phenologies of fall and winter-breeding amphibians are distinct from those of summer or spring-breeding species (Hocking et al. 2008, Parmesan 2007, Saenz et al. 2006). Finally, spatial compet..., All files are in Microsoft Excel. Data analysis was performed in R Studio.Â