A tool to understand how ecosystems are responding to a changing climate

As climate change accelerates, recording shifts in plant flowering times is critical to understanding how changes in climate will impact ecosystem interactions. Currently, when researchers reconstruct historical flowering times using dried herbarium specimens, they estimate first or peak flowering time using the day of the year (DOY) of plant collection as a proxy. Because herbarium specimens are collected at many different stages of flowering and fruiting (called "phenological" stages), this practice of using the day of collection creates shaky data that limits our ability to estimate how ecosystems will respond to a shifting climate.