Investigating the footprint of climate change on phenology and ecological interactions in north-central North America

AUTHOR

Kellen M. Calinger

Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210-1293;(kcalinger@gmail.com)

THE ECOLOGICAL QUESTION

Have long-term temperatures changed throughout Ohio? How will these temperature changes impact plant and animal phenology, ecological interactions, and, as a result, species diversity?

ECOLOGICAL CONTENT

Climate change, phenology, pollinators, trophic mismatch, species diversity, arrival time, mutualism

WHAT STUDENTS DO

• Produce and analyze graphs of temperature change using large, long-term data sets (Synthesis, Analysis)
• Develop methods for calculating species-specific shifts in flowering time with temperature increase (Synthesis)
• Use these methods to calculate flowering shifts in six plant species (Application)
• Describe the ecological consequences of shifting plant and animal phenology (Comprehension)
• Understand how interactions between species as well as with their abiotic environment affect community structure and species diversity (Knowledge, Comprehension)
• Evaluate data “cherry-picking” as a climate change skeptic tactic (Evaluation)

SKILLS

Work with large data sets, create and analyze multiple types of graphs, connect the development of procedures and data analysis to clarifying ecological impacts of climate change

STUDENT-ACTIVE APPROACHES

Open-ended inquiry, guided inquiry, cooperative learning, critical thinking

ASSESSABLE OUTCOMES

Student-made graphs, calculations of temperature and phenology shifts, answers to short questions, brief paragraphs describing student-generated methods

SOURCES

• Calinger et al., 2013. Herbarium specimens reveal the footprint of climate change on flowering trends across north-central North America. Ecology Letters 16:1037–1044. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12135/abstract
• Ledneva et al., 2004. Climate Change as Reflected in a Naturalist’s Diary, Middleborough, Massachusetts. Wilson Bulletin 116:224–231. http://people.bu.edu/primack/Ledneva_etal_2004_naturalists.pdf
• U.S. Historical Climatology Network http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/monthly_doc.html

DOWNLOADS

• Full Article Text [doc], [pdf]



Description of Excel Files:

The temperature data contained in these files originated from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (Menne et al. 2010) and is freely available to the public. The flowering phenology data are from my own publication and is an Open Access article freely available to the public (Calinger et al. 2013).

• Student Data: [xlsx]
• Faculty Data: [xlsx]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Drs. Peter Curtis and Elizabeth Marschall for their helpful insight and editing.

CITATION

Kellen M. Calinger. April 2014, posting date. Investigating the footprint of climate change on phenology and ecological interactions in north-central North AmericaTeaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology, Vol. 10: Practice #1 [online]. http://tiee.esa.org/vol/v10/issues/datasets/calinger/abstract.html