Future Directions
These results indicate that, with some caveats, there is no fundamental
barrier that prevents the prediction of population-level flowering
timing and duration from specimen-based phenoclimate models. Further,
our results show that little more data are needed than have been used by
phenoclimate models predicting simple mean (or median) phenological
dates (Park and Mazer 2018, Ramirez-Parada et al. 2022). However, we
have also identified certain phenological modalities, such species that
flower close to the start and end of the growing season, where
inferences from collections should be examined cautiously.
Although our simulations were conducted on plant flowering phenology,
the underlying results may apply to the development of phenoclimate
models of any taxon whose phenology can be assessed from herbaria or
other natural history collections data. While the accuracy of those
models was not explicitly tested, similar methods have already been used
to evaluate the activity period of bee species across the Northeastern
United States (Dorian et al. 2022). Thus, widespread assessment should
be possible of the effects of climate change on many other taxa and on
synchrony among co-occurring plant species, and plants and their
pollinators, pests, and frugivores.