This is Scientific American's 62nd Science.

I'm Shayla Farson.

Many plants and animals use temperature and other environmental cues like a calendar,

letting them know when it's time to bloom or find a mate.

But climate change is disrupting these natural rhythms worldwide, from songbird migration

across North America, to plankton growth cycles in Norway, to a hillside of wild

flowers in Missouri.

So if we head on out, you can notice there are a number of different species that have

popped up.

Dwarf-crested iris, blue flocks, Canadian woodbed knee.

Matthew Austin is a post-doctoral researcher with the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington

University.

This patch of forest, about 40 miles west of St. Louis, is covered with native wild flowers

throughout the spring and summer.

But the timing of when they bloom has changed in recent decades, Austin says.

We see that a warming climate is not only causing flowers to bloom earlier, in many species

it's also causing them to end flowering later.

Missouri wild flowers are blooming up to a week longer than they used to, compared to

data collected in the 1930s and 40s, and that's created a late summer pile-up of species

flowering all at once.

Meanwhile, bumblebees and other pollinators are flitting from species to species, says

Nicole Miller Strutman, a biologist at Webster University.

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