The unique and multifaceted importance of the timing of flowering

Abstract

Timing is critically important in many things in life. Sometimes it is best to be first, and sometimes it is decidedly not. A trait that illustrates this idea particularly well is the timing of flowering in plants (Primack, 1985; Rathcke and Lacey, 1985). A plant that flowers too early or too late can miss out on reproduction entirely and be quickly weeded from the gene pool. But while many traits influence fitness, flowering time is perhaps unique in influencing a multitude of ecological and evolutionary processes, including mating patterns, gene flow, and interactions between plant and animal pollinators (Elzinga et al., 2007). In addition to influencing ecological and evolutionary processes, phenology is also acutely shaped by them, with flowering time clearly responding (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003) and, in some cases rapidly adapting (Franks et al., 2007), to changing environmental conditions. Furthermore, the timing of flowering often has profound influences on connections between different levels of organization, with effects that ripple up the ecological hierarchy from individuals to populations, communities, and ecosystems. Flowering time can also directly interconnect ecological and evolutionary processes and play a key role in eco-evolutionary dynamics, which is the way that contemporary evolutionary changes influence ecological interactions (Pelletier et al., 2009). The profoundly important way in which flowering time influences these interconnections is an exciting, active area of research.