July 6, 2017
I discovered what I think is the first colour pollen diagram this week. Published in 1948 and still looks beautiful.
Selling, O.H. (1948) On the late Quaternary history of the Hawaiian vegetation. PhD thesis, University of Stockholm, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Images of the copy held at the University of Amsterdam library.
February 28, 2017
Having recently become an Associate Editor for Vegetation History & Archaeobotany I have decided that I will try and highlight a couple papers from the journal each months which have caught my attention. My first selections are:
For more detailed thoughts on these papers read on…
Kissling, W.D., Blach-Overgaard, A., Zwaan, R.E. & Wagner, P. (2016) Historical colonization and dispersal limitation supplement climate and topography in shaping species richness of African lizards (Reptilia: Agaminae). Scientific Reports 6, 34014. DOI: 10.1038/srep34014
Lutz, H.L., Weckstein, J.D., Patane, J.S.L., Bates, J.M. & Aleixo, A. (2013) Biogeography and spatio-temporal diversification of Selenidera and Andigena Toucans (Aves: Ramphastidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 69, 873-883. DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2013.06.017
Malhi Y. , Gardner T.A., Goldsmith G.R., Silman M.R., Zelazowski P. (2014) Tropical forests in the Anthropocene. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 39, 125-159. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-environ-030713-155141
Morueta-Holme, N., Engemann, K., Sandoval-Acuña, P., Jonas, J.D., Segnitz, R.M. & Svenning, J. (2015) Strong upslope shifts in Chimborazo’s vegetation over two centuries since Humboldt. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, 12741-12745. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1509938112
Hall, S.A. (2010) Early maize pollen from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, USA. Palynology 34, 125-137. DOI: 10.1080/01916121003675746
Janzen, D.H. (1967) Why mountain passes are higher in the tropics. The American Naturalist 101, 233-249. DOI: 10.1086/282487
Tovar, C., Arnillas, C.A., Cuesta, F. & Buytaert, W. (2013) Diverging responses of tropical Andean biomes under future climate conditions. PLoS ONE 8, e63634. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0063634
Bertola, L.D., Jongbloed, H., van, d.G., de Knijff, P., Yamaguchi, N., Hooghiemstra, H., Bauer, H., Henschel, P., White, P.A., Driscoll, C.A., Tende, T., Ottosson, U., Saidu, Y., Vrieling, K. & de Iongh, H.H. (2016) Phylogeographic Patterns in Africa and High Resolution Delineation of Genetic Clades in the Lion (Panthera leo). Scientific Reports 6, 30807. DOI: 10.1038/srep30807
Rull, V. The ‘Anthropocene’: A requiem for the Geologic Time Scale? Quaternary Geochronology. DOI: 10.1016/j.quageo.2016.08.006
Xu, H., Lan, J., Sheng, E., Liu, Y., Liu, B., Yu, K., Ye, Y., Cheng, P., Qiang, X., Lu, F. & Wang, X. (2016) Tropical/Subtropical Peatland Development and Global CH4 during the Last Glaciation. Scientific Reports 6, 30431. DOI: 10.1038/srep30431
Goldberg, A., Mychajliw, A.M. & Hadly, E.A. (2016) Post-invasion demography of prehistoric humans in South America. Nature advance online publication. doi: 10.1038/nature17176
Baker, A.G., Cornelissen, P., Bhagwat, S.A., Vera, F.W.M. & Willis, K.J. (2016) Quantification of population sizes of large herbivores and their long-term functional role in ecosystems using dung fungal spores. Methods in Ecology and Evolution online. doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12580
van Beek, R., Gouw-Bouman, M.T.I.J. & Bos, J.A.A. (2015) Mapping regional vegetation developments in Twente (the Netherlands) since the Late Glacial and evaluating contemporary settlement patterns. Netherlands Journal of Geosciences-Geologie En Mijnbouw 94, 229-255. doi: 10.1017/njg.2014.40
Burn, M.J. & Palmer, S.E. (2014) Solar forcing of Caribbean drought events during the last millennium. Journal of Quaternary Science 29, 827-836. doi: 10.1002/jqs.2660
Göldel, B., Araujo, A.C., Kissling, W.D. & Svenning, J.-C. (2016) Impacts of large herbivores on spinescence and abundance of palms in the Pantanal, Brazil. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society in press. doi: 10.1111/boj.12420
Llamas, B., Fehren-Schmitz, L., Valverde, G., Soubrier, J., Mallick, S., Rohland, N., Nordenfelt, S., Valdiosera, C., Richards, S.M., Rohrlach, A., Romero, M.I.B., Espinoza, I.F., Cagigao, E.T., Jiménez, L.W., Makowski, K., Reyna, I.S.L., Lory, J.M., Torrez, J.A.B., Rivera, M.A., Burger, R.L., Ceruti, M.C., Reinhard, J., Wells, R.S., Politis, G., Santoro, C.M., Standen, V.G., Smith, C., Reich, D., Ho, S.Y.W., Cooper, A. & Haak, W. (2016) Ancient mitochondrial DNA provides high-resolution time scale of the peopling of the Americas. Science Advances 2. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1501385
Turner, T.E., Swindles, G.T., Charman, D.J., Langdon, P.G., Morris, P.J., Booth, R.K., Parry, L.E. & Nichols, J.E. (2016) Solar cycles or random processes? Evaluating solar variability in Holocene climate records. Scientific Reports 6, 23961. doi: 10.1038/srep23961
Lahr, M.M. et al. (2016) Inter-group violence among early Holocene hunter-gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya. Nature 529, 394-398. doi: 10.1038/nature16477
Rademaker, K., Hodgins, G., Moore, K., Zarrillo, S., Miller, C., Bromley, G.R.M., Leach, P., Reid, D.A., Yepez Alvarez, W. & Sandweiss, D.H. (2014) Paleoindian settlement of the high-altitude Peruvian Andes. Science 346, 466-469. doi: 10.1126/science.1258260
da Silva, S.G. & Tehrani, J.J. (2016) Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales. Royal Society Open Science 3. doi
Veenendaal, E.M. et al. (2015) Structural, physiognomic and above-ground biomass variation in savanna-forest transition zones on three continents – how different are co-occurring savanna and forest formations? Biogeosciences 12, 2927-2951. doi: 10.5194/bg-12-2927-2015
In the news
Ancient ‘massacre’ unearthed near Lake Turkana, Kenya, by Anon. BBC News: Africa
Bronze Age houses uncovered in Cambridgeshire are Britain’s ‘Pompeii’ , by Anon. BBC News: Cambridgeshire
Scientists weigh in on ‘giraffe relative’ fossil by Helen Briggs. BBC News: Science & Environment
Sex with Neanderthals may be the cause of modern allergies, studies suggest by Doug Bolton. Independent: Science
Scientific articles
Patterson, R.T., Huckerby, G., Kelly, T.J., Swindles, G.T. & Nasser, N.A. (2015) Hydroecology of Amazonian lacustrine Arcellinida (testate amoebae): A case study from Lake Quistococha, Peru. European Journal of Protistology 51, 460-469. DOI: 10.1016/j.ejop.2015.06.009
Pitulko, V.V., Tikhonov, A.N., Pavlova, E.Y., Nikolskiy, P.A., Kuper, K.E. & Polozov, R.N. (2016) Early human presence in the Arctic: Evidence from 45,000-year-old mammoth remains. Science 351, 260-263. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad0554
Moseley, G.E., Edwards, R.L., Wendt, K.A., Cheng, H., Dublyansky, Y., Lu, Y., Boch, R. & Spotl, C. (2016) Reconciliation of the Devils Hole climate record with orbital forcing. Science 351, 165-168. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad4132
In the news:
Jonathan Amos (2016) ‘Case is made’ for Anthropogenic Epoch. BBC News: Science & Environment.
Scientific publications:
Sarmiento, F.O. (2002) Anthropogenic change in the landscapes of highland Ecuador. Geographical Review 92, 213-234. doi: 10.1111/j.1931-0846.2002.tb00005.x
Swindles, G.T., Lamentowicz, M., Reczuga, M. & Galloway, J.M. (online) Palaeoecology of testate amoebae in a tropical peatland. European Journal of Protistology. doi: 10.1016/j.ejop.2015.10.002
Tellkamp, M.P. (2014) Habitat change and trade explain the bird assemblage from the La Chimba archaeological site in the northeastern Andes of Ecuador. Ibis 156, 812-825. doi: 10.1111/ibi.12179
Waters, C.N., Zalasiewicz, J., Summerhayes, C., Barnosky, A.D., Poirier, C., Galuszka, A., Cearreta, A., Edgeworth, M., Ellis, E.C., Ellis, M., Jeandel, C., Leinfelder, R., McNeill, J.R., Richter, D.d., Steffen, W., Syvitski, J., Vidas, D., Wagreich, M., Williams, M., Zhisheng, A., Grinevald, J., Odada, E., Oreskes, N. & Wolfe, A.P. (2016) The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene. Science 351, . doi: 10.1126/science.aad2622
Ecology of the past 