Temperature controls phenology in continuously flowering Protea species of subtropical Africa.

ABSTRACT:

Premise of the study

Herbarium specimens are increasingly used as records of plant flowering phenology. However, most herbarium-based studies on plant phenology focus on taxa from temperate regions. Here, we explore flowering phenologic responses to climate in the subtropical plant genus Protea (Proteaceae), an iconic group of plants that flower year-round and are endemic to subtropical Africa.

Methods

We present a novel, circular sliding window approach to investigate phenological patterns developed for species with year-round flowering. We employ our method to evaluate the extent to which site-to-site and year-to-year variation in temperature and precipitation affect flowering dates using a database of 1727 herbarium records of 25 Protea species. We also expl

SUBMITTER: Daru BH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6426162 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature