Casting your network wide: a plea to scale-up phenological research

Thackeray, Stephen J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3274-2706. 2016 Casting your network wide: a plea to scale-up phenological research. Biology Letters, 12 (6), 20160181. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2016.0181

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Abstract/Summary

Accumulating scientific evidence has demonstrated widespread shifts in the biological seasons. These shifts may modify seasonal interspecific interactions, with consequent impacts upon reproductive success and survival. However, current understanding of these impacts is based upon a limited number of studies that adopt a simplified ‘bottom-up’ food-chain paradigm, at a local scale. I argue that there is much insight to be gained by widening the scope of phenological studies to incorporate food-web interactions and landscape-scale processes across a diversity of ecosystem types, with the ultimate goal of developing a generic understanding of the systems most vulnerable to synchrony effects in the future. I propose that co-location of predator and prey phenological monitoring at sentinel sites, acting as research platforms for detailed food-web studies, experimentation and match-up with earth observation data, would be an important first step in this endeavour.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2016.0181
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Parr
ISSN:	1744-9561
Additional Keywords:	food web, predator–prey, spatial heterogeneity, synchrony, trophic cascade
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment
Date made live:	28 Jun 2016 10:19 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/513719

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