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High school marching bands plan all year to attend the parade and perform, surrounded by a majestic white canopy.How disappointing for them to find, well, trees rather than the famous cherry blossoms!Plants and animals react to changes in natural light and temperature.Increasing temperatures cause plants to bloom earlier than before,and become out of sync with the insects and birds in a food web.So, the next time you look out your window and notice what season it is,you may be fooled by those blooming trees.Think of phenology,then think of how you can play a part to slow climate change.

Migrating pied flycatcher birds, however,aren't doing as well.The birds prefer to feed their chicks winter moth caterpillars.The caterpillars are now hatching earlier,but the birds' chicks are not.This delay is costing the birds a food source.The pied flycatcher population has decreased by up to 90% in some areas as a result.Changes to a seemingly simple event,leaves opening,has ripple effects throughout a food web.Earlier bloom times can also have an economic impact.The famed cherry blossoms in Washington D.C.are blooming five days earlier than before.Since the cherry trees are blooming earlier,the blossoms also fade earlier,frustrating thousands of tourists who visit for the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Bud burst, the day when a tree or plant's leaf or flower buds open,is occurring earlier in the year for some species.For every one degree Celsius rise in temperature,bud burst happens five days earlier than usual.Differences in timing affect not only plants,but the insects and birds that depend on the plants for food.For example, oak trees in the Arnhem Forest of the Netherlands now experience bud burst ten days earlier,as compared to twenty years ago.New oak leaves are a favorite food of winter moth caterpillars.To survive, the caterpillars adapted to the change in the tree's timing,and now hatch 15 days earlier than before.

Literally meaning, the science of appearance,phenology comes from the Greek words pheno, to show or appear,and logos, to study.Humans have relied on phenology since the time of hunters and gatherers.We've watched changes in seasons to know when to plant and harvest food and when to track migrating animals.Scientists observe and document seasonal changes in nature and look for patterns in the timing of seasonal events.Timing of these natural signs has remained consistent until recently.Increasing global temperature is causing rhythms of nature to shift.

Take a look outside a window.What is the season where you are?How do you know?Most likely, you looked at a tree or plant and noticed details about its leaves and assessed the qualities of sunlight streaming outside.Observing the timing of biological events in relation to changes in season and climate is called phenology. When you notice the daffodil buds are poking through the snow and think spring is on its way,you're using phenology.When you see leaves turn from green to red,and watch migrating birds fly past,and realize that summer is over, autumn is here,you're using phenology.

Past interventions have successfully helped depleted fish populations recover.There are many solutions.The best approach for each fishery must be considered based on science,respect for the local communities that rely on the ocean,and for fish as wild animals.And then the rules must be enforced.International collaboration is often needed, too,because fish don't care about our borders.We need to end overfishing.Ecosystems,food security,jobs,economies,and coastal cultures all depend on it.

So what does it look like to give fish a break and let them recover?Protection can take many forms.In national waters,governments can set limits about how, when, where, and how much fishing occurs,with restrictions on certain boats and equipment.Harmful practices, such as bottom trawling, can be banned altogether,and we can establish marine reserves closed to all fishing to help ecosystems restore themselves.There's also a role for consumer awareness and boycotts to reduce wasteful practices,like shark finning,and push fishing industries towards more sustainable practices.

Fishing also has impacts on broader ecosystems.Wild shrimp are typically caught by dragging nets the size of a football field along the ocean bottom,disrupting or destroying seafloor habitats.The catch is often as little as 5% shrimp.The rest is by-catch, unwanted animals that are thrown back dead.And coastal shrimp farming isn't much better.Mangroves are bulldozed to make room for shrimp farms,robbing coastal communities of storm protection and natural water filtration and depriving fish of key nursery habitats.

Consumer taste and prices can also have harmful effects.For example, shark fin soup is considered such a delicacy in China and Vietnam that the fin has become the most profitable part of the shark.This leads many fishermen to fill their boats with fins leaving millions of dead sharks behind.The problems aren't unique to toothfish and sharks.Almost 31% of the world's fish populations are overfished,and another 58% are fished at the maximum sustainable level.Wild fish simply can't reproduce as fast as 7 billion people can eat them.

And as the distance and depth of fishing have expanded,so has the variety of species we target.For example, the Patagonian toothfish neither sounds nor looks very appetizing.And fishermen ignored it until the late 1970s.Then it was rebranded and marketed to chefs in the U.S. as Chilean sea bass,despite the animal actually being a type of cod.Soon it was popping up in markets all over the world and is now a delicacy.Unfortunately, these deep water fish don't reproduce until they're at least ten years old,making them extremely vulnerable to overfishing when the young are caught before they've had the chance to spawn.

In fact, the technologies they employ were developed for war.Radar,sonar,helicopters,and spotter planes are all used to guide factory ships towards dwindling schools of fish.Long lines with hundreds of hooks or huge nets round up massive amounts of fish,along with other species,like seabirds, turtles, and dolphins.And fish are hauled up onto giant boats,complete with onboard flash freezing and processing facilities.All of these technologies have enabled us to catch fish at greater depths and farther out at sea than ever before.

Fish are in trouble.The cod population off Canada's East Coast collapsed in the 1990s,intense recreational and commercial fishing has decimated goliath grouper populations in South Florida,and most populations of tuna have plummeted by over 50%,with the Southern Atlantic bluefin on the verge of extinction.Those are just a couple of many examples.Overfishing is happening all over the world.How did this happen?When some people think of fishing,they imagine relaxing in a boat and patiently reeling in the day's catch.But modern industrial fishing,the kind that stocks our grocery shelves,looks more like warfare.

Across the planet, we're making on-the-ground decisions that will help entire ecosystems adapt.Critical climate refuges are being identified and set aside,and projects are underway to help mobile species move to more suitable climates.Existing parks and protected areas are also doing climate change check-ups to help their wildlife cope.Fortunately, it's still within our power to preserve much of the wondrous biodiversity of this planet,which, after all, sustains us in so many ways.

However, scientists hope to discover more species evolving in response to climate change out of 8.7 million species on the planet.For most of our planet's astounding and precious biodiversity,evolution won't be the answerevolution won't be the answer.Instead, many of those species will have to rely on us to help them survive a changing world or face extinction.The good news is we already have the tools.

Scientists think that keeps them from overheating.Meanwhile, pink salmon have adapted to warmer waters by spawning earlier in the season to protect their sensitive eggs.And wild thyme plants in Europe are producing more repellent oils to protect themselves against the herbivores that become more common when it's warm.These plants and animals belong to a group of about 20 identified species with evolutionary adaptations to rapid climate change,including snapping turtles,wood frogs,knotweed,and silver spotted skipper butterflies.

The offspring of the brown color morphs,on the other hand,have an advantage in exposed forests,so brown tawny owls are flourishing today.Several other species have undergone similar climate-change-adaptive genetic changes in recent decades.Pitcher plant mosquitoes have rapidly evolved to take advantage of the warmer temperatures,entering dormancy later and later in the year.Two spot ladybug populations,once comprised of equal numbers of melanic and non-melanic morphs,have now shifted almost entirely to the non-melanic color combination.

Since the 1980s,climate change has led to significantly less snowfall,but you'd still struggle to spot a tawny owl because nowadays, they're brown.The brown color variant is the genetically dominant form of plumage in this species,but historically,the recessive pale gray variant triumphed because of its selective advantage in helping these predators blend in.However, less snodw cover reduces opportunities for camouflage,so lately, this gray color variant has been losing the battle against natural selection.

That's why scientists are seeking examples of evolutionary changes coded in species' DNA that are heritable,long-lasting,and may provide a key to their future.Take the tawny owl.If you were walking through a wintry forest in northern Europe 30 years ago,chances are you'd have heard,rather than seen,this elusive bird.Against the snowy backdrop,it's plumage would have been near impossible to spot.Today, the landscape is vastly different.

But in cases where species are under especially strong selective conditions,like those caused by rapidly changing climates,adaptive evolution can happen more quickly.In recent decades,we've seen many plants,animals,and insects relocating themselves and undergoing changes to their body sizes,and the dates they flower or breed.But many of these are plastic,or nonheritable changes to an individual's physical traits.And there are limits to how much an organism can change its own physiology to meet environmental requirements.

Rising temperatures and seas,smassive droughts,changing landscapes.Successfully adapting to climate change is growing increasingly important.For humans, this means using our technological advancement to find solutions,like smarter cities and better water management.But for some plants and animals,adapting to these global changes involves the most ancient solution of all:evolution.Evolutionary adaptation usually occurs along time scales of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.