Climate change can disturb the accuracy of trees’ biological clocks

The higher temperatures brought on by global warming can disrupt trees’ ability to track time, with potential consequences for their capacity to sequester carbon or even survive.

Climate change is already disturbing the timings of events in ecosystems by shuffling migrations, breeding, and food cycles that have historically been intricately coordinated. But like humans and other animals, plants have a genetic ability to track time that functions independently of their ecosystems.

María Verónica Arana at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and her colleagues studied saplings of Nothofagus…