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Phenological divergence between plants and animals under climate change

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 9, pages 261–272 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate change has altered the timing of recurring biological cycles in both plants and animals. Phenological changes may be unequal within and among trophic levels, potentially impacting the intricate interactions that regulate ecosystem functioning. Here we compile and analyse a global dataset of terrestrial phenological observations, including nearly half a million time series for both plants and animals. Our analysis reveals an increasing phenological asynchronization between plants and animals from 1981 to 2020, with a stronger overall advancement of late-season phenophases for plants than for animals. Almost 30% of temporal variations in plant phenophases can be explained by the timing of the preceding phenophases. This temporal dependency allows the advancement caused by warming to accumulate and propagate through seasons, advancing later phenophases more than earlier phases. By contrast, animals rely on various environmental cues and resource-tracking strategies to initiate their life-cycle activities, which weakens their cross-phenophase linkage and undermines the effect of warming. Our results suggest that future warming may increase phenological asynchronization between plants and animals and potentially disturb trophic interactions and ecosystem stability.

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Fig. 1: Global distribution of phenological records.
Fig. 2: Temporal trends of phenophases for plant and animal.
Fig. 3: Changes of intervals between phenophases for plants.
Fig. 4: Changes of intervals between phenophases for animals.
Fig. 5: Divergent phenological changes between plants and animals in the Northern Hemisphere.

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Data availability

The phenological data from the phenological observation networks are available from the following: USANPN, http://www.usanpn.org/; Nature’s Calendar, https://naturescalendar.woodlandtrust.org.uk/; Plant Watch, https://www.naturewatch.ca/; PEP725, http://www.pep725.eu/; SFP, https://snd.gu.se/en/catalogue/study/2021-194; Chronicle of Nature Calendar, https://zenodo.org/record/3607556 (ref. 85); KMA, https://www.weather.go.kr/; and JMA, https://www.data.jma.go.jp/. The phenological data from CMA were provided by the Meteorological Information Center of the China Meteorological Administration.

Code availability

All computer codes used in this study are available via GitHub at https://github.com/PKUPhenology/phenological-divergence.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41988101). We thank the Meteorological Information Center of the China Meteorological Administration for providing phenological data and X. Chen in Peking University and his students for digitizing the phenological records.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Sino–French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Weiguang Lang, Yao Zhang, Xiangyi Li, Kai Wang, Hao Xu & Shilong Piao

  2. State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Fandong Meng & Shilong Piao

  3. School of Remote Sensing and Geomatics Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, China

    Qiang Liu

  4. Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Anping Chen

  5. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Valles, Barcelona, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas

  6. CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Barcelona, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas

  7. Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium

    Ivan A. Janssens

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  1. Weiguang Lang
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Contributions

S.P., Y.Z. and W.L. designed the research. W.L. performed analysis. W.L. and Y.Z. wrote the first draft of the paper. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the results and to the text.

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Correspondence to Yao Zhang or Shilong Piao.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information (download PDF )

Supplementary Methods, Figs. 1–38 and Table 1.

Reporting Summary (download PDF )

Supplementary Data 1 (download XLSX )

Lists of 542 publications containing extractable ground-observed phenology data for plants (a) and animals (b).

Supplementary Data 2 (download XLSX )

The list of plant species and their growth habits.

Supplementary Data 3 (download XLSX )

The list of plant phenophases and the phenological events.

Supplementary Data 4 (download XLSX )

The list of animal species and their classes.

Supplementary Data 5 (download XLSX )

The list of animal phenophases and the phenological events.

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Lang, W., Zhang, Y., Li, X. et al. Phenological divergence between plants and animals under climate change. Nat Ecol Evol 9, 261–272 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02597-0

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