Primack Lab in the News: Autumn 2023

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“What do we have to do with petty rumbling news? We have our own great affairs.” Henry David Thoreau in his Correspondence.

Three recent news articles highlighted our research:

Budburst, a national citizen science project, featured our research program in their September 2023 newsletter. The article (reproduced below) highlighted our innovative use of Henry David Thoreau’s phenology records combined with modern observations to demonstrate the ecological effects of climate change. 

Meet Dr. Richard Primack, Professor of plant ecology at Boston University.

Dr. Primack’s work combines historical records, like those of the famous writer Henry David Thoreau during the 1850s, with more recent observations of phenology to detect the fingerprints of climate change on plants and birds. He also loves to explore new ways to study phenology, like by using museum specimens, photographs, old diaries, and branch clippings.

Much of Dr. Primack’s research takes place in Concord, Massachusetts, where his team is building on the phenological observations of hundreds of bird and plant species made by Thoreau, other local naturalists, and citizen scientists over the past 170 years. He and his team also study phenology at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University in Boston, a botanical garden with hundreds of species of trees from around the world growing in one place. Dr. Primack collaborates with colleagues in Japan, South Korea, China, Japan, and Denmark, countries that have long traditions of recording phenology.

Dr. Primack’s research has revealed that climate change is likely disrupting ecological relationships between birds and plants, and between forest trees and the wildflowers that grow on the forest floor. Forest trees, for example, are leafing out earlier relative to wildflowers in the northeastern US, shading forest floors earlier in the spring and leaving wildflowers with less sunlight to help them grow. In addition, the spring arrival times of birds is changing more slowly in response to climate change than the phenology of plants, with likely negative consequences for birds.

Photo 1: Richard Primack monitoring fall phenology. 

BU Today had a short article on our research on pollinators and pollinator gardens in Newton being carried out by undergrads Selby Vaughn and Katia Landauer. One major finding was that there were always mixtures of honeybees, native bees, and other insects on common native and cultivated plants, suggesting that honeybees and native bees can coexist in a suburban landscape. 

See the article here: LINK 

Photo 2: Richard Primack and Selby Vaughn monitoring a pollinator garden.

The Boston Globe interviewed Richard for an article on the effects of the current warm and wet autumn on the fall foliage colors expected for New England. One prediction is that the fall foliage season will be somewhat later than usual, but the colors should be vibrant. 

See the article here: LINK 

Photo 3: New England is known for its beautiful fall foliage.