Phenological Differentiation in Sugar Maple Populations and Responses of Bud Break to an Experimental Warming

Ping Ren,Eryuan Liang,Sergio Rossi,Patricia Raymond

doi:10.3390/f11090929

Abstract

Species with wide geographical ranges exhibit specific adaptations to local climates, which may result in diverging responses among populations to changing conditions. Climate change has advanced spring phenology worldwide, but questions of whether and how the phenological responses to warming differ among individuals across the natural range of a species remain. We conducted two experiments in January and April 2019, and performed daily observations of the timings of bud break in 1-year-old seedlings of sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marshall) from 25 Canadian provenances at two thermal conditions (14/10 and 18/14 °C day/night temperature) in a controlled environment. Overall, bud break started 6 days from the beginning of the experiments and finished after 125 days. The earlier events were observed in seedlings originating from the colder sites. Bud break was delayed by 4.8 days per additional degree Celsius in the mean annual temperature at the origin site. Warming advanced the timing of bud break by 17–27 days in January and by 3–8 days in April. Similar advancements in bud break were observed among provenances under warming conditions, which rejected our hypothesis that sugar maple populations have different phenological responses to warming. Our findings confirm the differentiation in ecotypes for the process of bud break in sugar maple. In cases of homogenous spring warming across the native range of sugar maple, similar advancements in bud phenology can be expected in different populations.

Highlights

An earlier bud break induced by rising spring temperatures has been observed in temperate and boreal ecosystems worldwide during the last decades [1,2,3]
was observed at day/night temperatures ofto (Warmer) sites were included in the first cluster, with a mean annual temperature of 5.4 ◦ C and 162 frost days
We monitored daily the timings of bud break in sugar maple from 25 Canadian provenances under two thermal conditions to verify whether and how the phenological responses to temperature differ among populations

Summary

Introduction

An earlier bud break induced by rising spring temperatures has been observed in temperate and boreal ecosystems worldwide during the last decades [1,2,3]. Warming climate may lengthen the time required for chilling accumulation, leading to delayed leaf unfolding [9,10,11,12,13]. According to Hopkin’s bioclimatic law, plant spring phenology in North America shifts by 4 days for each degree of latitude northward, and 3.3 days for each 100 m increase in elevation [15]. To some extent, this law matches well with remote sensing observations [16] but shows inconsistent trends for recent decades [17]

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