Climate change intensifies plant-pollinator mismatch and increases secondary extinction risk for plants in northern latitudes

Shijia Peng, Aaron M Ellison, Charles Davis 

Climate change is altering the timing of species’ life-cycle events (i.e., phenology), but the rates of phenological shifts vary across taxa. These mismatches in phenological response may disrupt interactions between interdependent species, such as plants and their pollinators, which may lead to reduced plant reproduction via pollen limitation and contribute to secondary extinction risks for plants. However, secondary extinction risk is rarely assessed under future climate-change scenarios. Here, we used ca. 15,000 crowdsourced specimen records of Viola species and their solitary bee pollinators, spanning 120 years across the eastern United States, and integrated climate data, phenological information, and species distribution models to quantify the risk of secondary plant extinction associated with phenological mismatch with their pollinator bees. We further examined geographical patterns in secondary extinction risk for plants and explored how their interactions between plants and generalist versus specialist pollinators influence such risk. Secondary extinction risk of Viola spp. increases with latitude, indicating that future climate change likely will pose a greater threat to plant-bee pollinator networks at northern latitudes. Additionally, the sensitivity of secondary extinction risk to phenological mismatch with both generalist and specialist bee pollinators decreases with latitude: specialist bees display a sharper decrease at higher latitudes. Our findings demonstrate that existing conservation priorities based solely on primary extinction risk directly caused by climate change may not be sufficient to support self-sustaining populations of plants. Incorporating secondary extinction risk resulting from ecological mismatches between plants and pollinators into future global conservation frameworks should be carefully considered.