Professor Patricia Morellato begins PHENO2025 presentations

By Emerson José

The opening ceremony was followed by an opening session with Professor Dr. Patricia Morellato (Unesp, Brazil) nominated Towards a Global Phenology Science. According to the professor, “although the number of phenology related studies in the tropics has increased in the last 20 years, research across the Neotropics is still limited compared to the Northern Hemisphere—especially for certain ecological topics. Since the Neotropics is the most species rich region on Earth, there are still many unanswered questions. It’s important to identify data and knowledge gaps and find ways to address them in future studies.”

The studies point out that “Climate change is modifying the phenological cycle of many species, directly affecting the functioning of ecosystems, species distributions, agriculture and the feedbacks between the biosphere and the atmosphere. Phenology has become an important topic for many societal and economic issues.”

As a result, the community working on phenology has expanded considerably over the past 20 years, integrating actors other than scientists through participatory research action programs. Phenology has also gained interest from an increasing range of scientific disciplines (functional and evolutionary ecology, physiology, agronomy, genetics, climatology, remote sensing, aerobiology…).

To conclude, Morellato said that “for these reasons, we want to emphasize during this conference the fact that phenology is now at the crossroads of many different disciplines and actors, all working in providing insights and solutions to two enormous challenges that our societies are facing: climate change adaptation and mitigation and sustainable development”.