Climate change is affecting plants at Shaw Nature Reserve

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A Webster University Biology Professor has growing concern over how climate change appears to be impacting plants in the Shaw Nature Reserve.

Dr. Nicole Miller-Struttmann, one of the top pollinator researchers in the country, and Matt Austin, post-doctoral student with the Missouri Botanical Garden worked together on a recently published study that flowering plants are blooming earlier and longer.

"It's especially true not in the spring, but actually in the fall," said Miller-Struttmann. "This is something that there's been a lot of research that's focused on the spring and what's happening early on, but what we're seeing is that yes, we see that, but dramatic things are happening in the fall."

Miller-Struttmann and Austin have also noticed that plants usually stop flowering hard freezes, which doesn't take place now until end of October to early November now.

Austin says through their study, they were able to find data of 68 different species of plants, with the earliest data dating back all way to 1850.

"We have particularly really strong flowering data from the late-1930s and early 1940s when (former Missouri Botanical Garden director) Edgar Anderson went on weekly nature walks at Shaw Nature Reserve and recorded every species he saw and bloom every week," said Austin.

'When you compiled all these data, you see these really dramatic effects where many species are flowering for longer periods of time, particularly in the fall."

Austin also notes that some species like the Black-Eyed Susan and the Partridge pea are blooming more than a month longer in 2010 than they did in 1940 when Anderson was conducting the survey.

"If you look at mid-October, because frosts are occurring later in the season due to warming temperatures, the number of species that have flowered at the same time has literally increased by 100%," said Austin.

Some of the things that Miller-Struttmann and Austin have found is more plants are blooming at the same time, leading to more competition for pollinators, which could be a long-term concern.

"A tomato plant doesn't want pollen from an egg plant or an oak tree, they want their own kind of pollen," said Miller-Struttmann. "If a bee is moving through different species (of plants), that may not be good for the plant."

Austin says with more competition for pollinators from plants will means some species could see some reduced reproduced and a population decline in the future.