Spatial sampling inconsistency leads to differences in phenological sensitivity to warming between natural and...

Every organism has an optimum temperature range within which healthy growth and physiological functioning can occur. At the ends of this range, there will be a minimum and maximum temperature that interrupt biological processes.

Effect of Natural Selection on PhenotypesHave you ever wondered why some animals have spots, stripes, or specific colors? These visible traits, called phenotypes, are shaped by natural selection. A phenotype is how an organism's genes appear on the outside, like fur color, beak shape, or body size. When a phenotype helps an organism survive, like a rabbit’s white fur in the snow, natural selection favors that trait. Over time, helpful phenotypes become more common, while less useful traits...

Natural selection is an evolutionary process in which individuals with survival-promoting traits reproduce at higher rates. These favorable traits become more common within a population or species. Naturally selected traits initially arise via random genetic mutations. In order for selection to occur, there must be variation within a population, the trait controlling the variation must be heritable, and there must be an evolutionary advantage for variation in the trait.

Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.

The circadian—or biological—clock is an intrinsic, timekeeping, molecular mechanism that allows plants to coordinate physiological activities over 24-hour cycles called circadian rhythms. Photoperiodism is a collective term for the biological responses of plants to variations in the relative lengths of dark and light periods. The period of light-exposure is called the photoperiod.

Although the genetic makeup of an organism plays a major role in determining the phenotype, there are also several environmental factors, such as temperature, oxygen availability, presence of mutagens, that can alter an organism’s phenotype.
An example of how genetic background affects phenotype can be seen in horses. The Extension gene in horses is responsible for their coat color. A wild-type gene (EE) produces black pigment in the coat, while a mutant gene (ee) produces red pigment. A...