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Earlier spring phenological events have been widely reported in plants under global warming. Recent studies reported a slowdown in the warming‐induced advanced spring phenology in temperate regions. However, previous research mainly focused on daily mean temperature, thus neglecting the asymmetric phenological responses to daytime and nighttime temperature. Using long‐term records of leaf unfolding in eight deciduous species at 1300 sites across central Europe, we assessed and compared the effects of daytime temperature, nighttime temperature, and photoperiod on leaf unfolding during 1951–1980 and 1981–2013. Although leaf unfolding was advanced by daytime warming during 1951–2013, the advancing responses of leaf unfolding significantly decreased from 1951–1980 to 1981–2013 due to a lower accumulation of chilling units by daytime warming. Nighttime warming delayed leaf unfolding during 1951–1980 but advanced it during 1981–2013 due to a higher accumulation of chilling units by nighttime warming. In contrast, critical daylength and plasticity of leaf unfolding dates remained unchanged between 1951 and 2013. Our study provided evidence that daytime warming instead of nighttime warming accounts for the slowdown in the advancing spring phenology and implied that nighttime warming‐induced earlier spring phenology may be buffering the slowdown of the advanced spring phenology by daytime warming. The response of spring phenology to nighttime temperature may override that to daytime temperature under the actual trends in global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the drivers of plant phenology is critical to predict the impact of future warming on terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycling and feedbacks to climate. Using indoor growth chambers, air humidity is reported to influence spring phenology in temperate trees. However, previous studies have not investigated the effect of air humidity on the spring phenology using long-term and large-scale ground observations. Therefore, the role of humidity in spring phenology in temperate trees still remains poorly understood. Here, we synthesized 229,588 records of leaf unfolding dates in eight temperate tree species, including four early-successional and four late-successional species, at 1716 observation sites during 1951-2015 in Europe, and comprehensively analyzed the effect of humidity on the spring phenology. We found that rising humidity significantly delayed spring leaf unfolding for all eight temperate tree species. Leaf unfolding was more sensitive to humidity in early-successional species compared to late-successional species. In addition, the delaying effect of humidity on leaf unfolding increased as temperature warmed over the past 65 years. Our results provide evidence that spring leaf unfolding of temperate trees was significantly delayed by rising humidity. The delaying effect of humidity may restrict earlier spring phenology induced by warming, especially for early-successional species, under future climate warming scenarios in temperate forests., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Many plant species comprising the present-day Arctic flora are thought to have originated in the high mountains of North America and Eurasia, migrated northwards as global temperatures fell during the late Tertiary period, and thereafter attained a circumarctic distribution. However, supporting evidence for this hypothesis that provides a temporal framework for the origin, spread and initial attainment of a circumarctic distribution by an arctic plant is currently lacking. Here we examined the origin and initial formation of a circumarctic distribution of the arctic mountain sorrel (Oxyria digyna) by conducting a phylogeographic analysis of plastid and nuclear gene DNA variation. We provide evidence for an origin of this species in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of southwestern China, followed by migration into Russia c. 11 million yr ago (Ma), eastwards into North America by c. 4 Ma, and westwards into Western Europe by c. 1.96 Ma. Thereafter, the species attained a circumarctic distribution by colonizing Greenland from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Following the arrival of the species in North America and Europe, population sizes appear to have increased and then stabilized there over the last 1 million yr. However, in Greenland a marked reduction followed by an expansion in population size is indicated to have occurred during the Pleistocene., (© 2015 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2015 New Phytologist Trust.)

Studies over the past ten years have shown that the crown groups of most conifer genera are only about 15-25 Ma old. The genus Picea (spruces, Pinaceae), with around 35 species, appears to be no exception. In addition, molecular studies of co-existing spruce species have demonstrated frequent introgression. Perhaps not surprisingly therefore previous phylogenetic studies of species relationships in Picea, based mostly on plastid sequences, suffered from poor statistical support. We therefore generated mitochondrial, nuclear, and further plastid DNA sequences from carefully sourced material, striking a balance between alignability with outgroups and phylogenetic signal content. Motif duplications in mitochondrial introns were treated as characters in a stochastic Dollo model; molecular clock models were calibrated with fossils; and ancestral ranges were inferred under maximum likelihood. In agreement with previous findings, Picea diverged from its sister clade 180 million years ago (Ma), and the most recent common ancestor of today's spruces dates to 28 Ma. Different from previous analyses though, we find a large Asian clade, an American clade, and a Eurasian clade. Two expansions occurred from Asia to North America and several between Asia and Europe. Chinese P. brachytyla, American P. engelmannii, and Norway spruce, P. abies, are not monophyletic, and North America has ten, not eight species. Divergence times imply that Pleistocene refugia are unlikely to be the full explanation for the relationships between the European species and their East Asian relatives. Thus, northern Norway spruce may be part of an Asian species complex that diverged from the southern Norway spruce lineage in the Upper Miocene, some 6 Ma, which can explain the deep genetic gap noted in phylogeographic studies of Norway spruce. The large effective population sizes of spruces, and incomplete lineage sorting during speciation, mean that the interspecific relationships within each of the geographic clades require further studies, especially based on genomic information and population genetic data., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)