Two in five of the world's plant species are at risk of extinction. In the face of climate change, understanding why certain plant species are vulnerable to extinction while others prevail is more urgent than ever before. Previous studies linking climate and plant vital rates have found relatively modest effects, sometimes leading to the conclusion that other threats, such as land use change, may still be more important than climate drivers. However, these conclusions could result from wrong assumptions about which times of the year (which "time window") climate drivers such as temperature and precipitation influence plant species. "Most researchers assume that plant populations respond to the climate within twelve months and only use this time window in their models to analyze plant responses," says first author Sanne Evers from iDiv and MLU.