# First person – Skylar Graves

## TL;DR

This paper explores how changes in temperature and precipitation affect the flowering timing of tropical plants over six decades.

## Contribution

The study provides new insights into climate change impacts on tropical ecosystems through long-term flowering data.

## Key findings

- Temperature and precipitation changes drive shifts in tropical plant flowering timing.
- Data spans 1960–2021 across seven locations, showing long-term ecological trends.
- Findings highlight the use of flowering timing as a climate change indicator in tropical regions.

## Abstract

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Skylar Graves is first author on ‘
Changes in temperature and precipitation drive shifts in mean flowering timing of tropical plants from, 1960–2021 across seven locations’, published in BiO. Skylar is currently a PhD student (graduating May 2026) in the lab of Erin Manzitto-Tripp at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA, measuring changes in tropical flowering, which can be used as a measure of the impact of climate change on an ecosystem.