Phenological Shifts in Plants and Pollinators over a Century Disrupt Interaction Persistence

AbstractMutualistic interactions between plants and pollinators play an important role in supporting biodiversity and ecosystem stability. However, these interactions are increasingly threatened by climate change, which can alter the phenology of species and cause temporal mismatches between interacting partners. Leveraging historical and contemporary datasets collected more than a century apart, we investigated phenological shifts in plants and pollinators and the impact of changes in temporal overlap of the interaction partners on the persistence of their interactions. We found that the onset of flowering and insect activity generally started earlier and has lasted longer in the present. We also found that greater temporal overlap of plant and pollinator species predicted a higher probability of persistence of their interaction between time periods. Our results document phenological shifts over a century and emphasize the importance of maintaining phenological matching for the persistence of plant-pollinator interactions. This illustrates the value of historical datasets for understanding long-term ecological dynamics in the face of accelerating environmental change.