Relatively stable response of fruiting stage to warming and cooling relative to other phenological events.

The timing of the fruit-set stage (i.e., start and end of fruit set) is crucial in a plant's life cycle, but its response to temperature change is still unclear.

Responses of sequential and hierarchical phenological events to warming and cooling in alpine meadows.

Organisms' life cycles consist of hierarchical stages, from a single phenological stage (for example, flowering within a season), to vegetative and reproductive phases, to the total lifespan of the individual. Yet phenological events are typically studied in isolation, limiting our understanding of life history responses to climate change. Here, we reciprocally transfer plant communities along an elevation gradient to investigate plastic changes in the duration of sequential phenological events for six alpine species.