Climate change may lead to phenological mismatches, where the timing of critical events between interacting species becomes desynchronized, with potential negative consequences. Evidence documenting negative impacts on fitness is mixed. The Cushing match-mismatch hypothesis, the most common hypothesis underlying these studies, offers testable assumptions and predictions to determine consequences of phenological mismatch when combined with a pre-climate change baseline. Here, we highlight how improved approaches could rapidly advance mechanistic understanding. We find that, to the best of our knowledge, no study has yet collected the data required to test this hypothesis well, and 71% of studies fail to define a baseline. Experiments that clearly link timing to fitness and test extremes, integration across approaches and null models would aid robust predictions of shifts with climate change.

气候变化可能导致物候失配，相互作用物种之间关键事件的发生时间不同步，从而可能产生负面影响。证明对身体健康有负面影响的证据好坏参半。这些研究中最常见的假设是库欣匹配不匹配假说，它提供了可检验的假设和预测，以确定与气候变化前基线相结合时物候不匹配的后果。在这里，我们重点介绍改进的方法如何快速促进对机械的理解。我们发现，就我们所知，尚未进行任何研究来收集很好地检验该假设所需的数据，并且有71％的研究未能定义基线。实验清楚地将计时与适应性和极限测试相结合，