New paper! Henry D Thoreau, @jmheberling & I uncover the dark times ahead for spring wildflowers in temperate deciduous forests. Tweet summary now with gif descriptions!

Phenological mismatch with trees reduces wildflower carbon budgets @Ecology_Letters https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ele.13224

gif description - large bearded man, Hagrid from Harry Potter, shakes his head and says "It was dark time, Harry. Dark times."

Wildflowers in Thoreau’s time used to have almost an extra week between the beginning of spring and overstory canopy leaf out. The trees are responding to climate change faster than the wildflowers.

gif description - lit match burns under the words: Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Wildflowers should be afraid of the dark. They need to soak up the sun in early spring!

gif description - white woman (Sheryl Crow) on the beach gestures for you to join her, a gif from her music video 'Soak up the Sun'

@jmheberling used data from his Pittsburgh research to estimate how earlier canopy leaf out would effect carbon budgets for wildflowers in a warmer, shadier world. It’s not good news.

We often think about 'phenological mismatch’ as a problem for pollinators or migratory birds.

Climate change is decoupling these relationships.

But here we found that plant communities are experiencing phenological mismatches with each other.

gif description - angry white man in business suit shouts 'SHUT UP ABOUT THE SUN' in a scene from the TV Show the Office.

I loved working on this paper with @jmheberling, Jason Fridley, Susan Kalisz, and Richard Primack.

It was really fun to return to my PhD lab as a postdoc and mess around with some Thoreau data.

Hope you enjoy my favorite pun in the manuscript's Conclusions!

gif description - white woman from the Kardashian family shakes her head and says, 'So shady.'