This is scientific American 60 second science. I'm Christopher in Tagyatta.

As climate change dials up global temperatures, one effect is an earlier flower bloom.

But it turns out there's another factor that also... One effect is an earlier flower bloom,

but it turns out there's another factor that also means

faster flowering, and that is a loss in biodiversity

in a flower field.

The amount of change in flowering time

that we see with diversity loss is in the same magnitude

range as the amount of change in flowering time we see with rising temperatures.

Amy Wolf, an ecologist at Columbia University and UC Davis.

Wolf and her colleagues studied that effect in a grassland in Northern California, in study plots

with two to 16 species of plants.

And they found that for every two species lost,

the remaining flowers blossomed a day earlier on average,

possibly because the less diverse plots had higher soil temperatures,

more moisture and more nitrogen, all variables that could

tweak the bloom time. The studies in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The reason it matters, because flowers might bloom earlier than pollinators are expecting them.

And that could lead to a whole cascade of things.

If plants don't get pollinated or they don't get pollinated well, then you can kind of start to lose species at an even more rapid rate.

Wolf says it's too soon to know whether biodiversity loss and climate change

will have synergistic effects on flower timing. But combine climate change, species loss, and

...