Climate warming shifts the timing of seed germination

Despite the considerable number of studies on the impacts of climate change on alpine plants, there have been few attempts to investigate its effect on regeneration. Mondoni et al. consider altitudinal variation of temperature as a surrogate for future climate scenarios and expose seeds to 12 different cycles of simulated seasonal temperatures in the laboratory, derived from measurements at the soil surface of the study site on a glacier foreland. They conclude that climate warming will lead to a shift from spring to autumn emergence and that the extent of this change across species will be driven by seed dormancy status. Emergence in autumn could have major implications for species currently adapted to emerge in spring.