Vegetation Reconstruction From Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau Using Modern Analogue Technique–Comparing Sedimentary (Ancient) DNA and Pollen Data

To reconstruct past vegetation from pollen or, more recently, lake sedimentary DNA (sedDNA) data is a common goal in palaeoecology. To overcome the bias of a researcher’s subjective assessment and to assign past assemblages to modern vegetation types quantitatively, the modern analogue technique (MA...

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Published in:Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
Main Authors: Liu, Sisi, Li, Kai, Jia, Weihan, Stoof-Leichsenring, Kathleen Rosmarie, Liu, Xingqi, Cao, Xianyong, Herzschuh, Ulrike
Other Authors: China Scholarship Council, H2020 European Research Council
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Frontiers Media SA 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.668611
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.668611/full
id crfrontiers:10.3389/fevo.2021.668611
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spelling crfrontiers:10.3389/fevo.2021.668611 2024-04-28T08:12:06+00:00 Vegetation Reconstruction From Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau Using Modern Analogue Technique–Comparing Sedimentary (Ancient) DNA and Pollen Data Liu, Sisi Li, Kai Jia, Weihan Stoof-Leichsenring, Kathleen Rosmarie Liu, Xingqi Cao, Xianyong Herzschuh, Ulrike China Scholarship Council H2020 European Research Council 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.668611 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.668611/full unknown Frontiers Media SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution volume 9 ISSN 2296-701X Ecology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics journal-article 2021 crfrontiers https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.668611 2024-04-02T07:43:12Z To reconstruct past vegetation from pollen or, more recently, lake sedimentary DNA (sedDNA) data is a common goal in palaeoecology. To overcome the bias of a researcher’s subjective assessment and to assign past assemblages to modern vegetation types quantitatively, the modern analogue technique (MAT) is often used for vegetation reconstruction. However, a rigorous comparison of MAT-derived pollen-based and sedDNA-based vegetation reconstruction is lacking. Here, we assess the dissimilarity between modern taxa assemblages from lake surface-sediments and fossil taxa assemblages from four lake sediment cores from the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau and northern Siberia using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, ordination methods, and Procrustes analyses. Modern sedDNA samples from 190 lakes and pollen samples from 136 lakes were collected from a variety of vegetation types. Our results show that more modern analogues are found with sedDNA than pollen when applying similarly derived thresholds. In particular, there are few modern pollen analogues for open vegetation such as alpine or arctic tundra, limiting the ability of treeline shifts to be clearly reconstructed. In contrast, the shifts in the main vegetation communities are well captured by sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA). For example, pronounced shifts from late-glacial alpine meadow/steppe to early–mid-Holocene coniferous forests to late Holocene Tibetan shrubland vegetation types are reconstructed for Lake Naleng on the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau. Procrustes and PROTEST analyses reveal that intertaxa relationships inferred from modern sedaDNA datasets align with past relationships generally, while intertaxa relationships derived from modern pollen spectra are mostly significantly different from fossil pollen relationships. Overall, we conclude that a quantitative sedaDNA-based vegetation reconstruction using MAT is more reliable than a pollen-based reconstruction, probably because of the more straightforward taphonomy that can relate sedDNA ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Tundra Siberia Frontiers (Publisher) Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 9
institution Open Polar
collection Frontiers (Publisher)
op_collection_id crfrontiers
language unknown
topic Ecology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
spellingShingle Ecology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Liu, Sisi
Li, Kai
Jia, Weihan
Stoof-Leichsenring, Kathleen Rosmarie
Liu, Xingqi
Cao, Xianyong
Herzschuh, Ulrike
Vegetation Reconstruction From Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau Using Modern Analogue Technique–Comparing Sedimentary (Ancient) DNA and Pollen Data
topic_facet Ecology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
description To reconstruct past vegetation from pollen or, more recently, lake sedimentary DNA (sedDNA) data is a common goal in palaeoecology. To overcome the bias of a researcher’s subjective assessment and to assign past assemblages to modern vegetation types quantitatively, the modern analogue technique (MAT) is often used for vegetation reconstruction. However, a rigorous comparison of MAT-derived pollen-based and sedDNA-based vegetation reconstruction is lacking. Here, we assess the dissimilarity between modern taxa assemblages from lake surface-sediments and fossil taxa assemblages from four lake sediment cores from the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau and northern Siberia using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, ordination methods, and Procrustes analyses. Modern sedDNA samples from 190 lakes and pollen samples from 136 lakes were collected from a variety of vegetation types. Our results show that more modern analogues are found with sedDNA than pollen when applying similarly derived thresholds. In particular, there are few modern pollen analogues for open vegetation such as alpine or arctic tundra, limiting the ability of treeline shifts to be clearly reconstructed. In contrast, the shifts in the main vegetation communities are well captured by sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA). For example, pronounced shifts from late-glacial alpine meadow/steppe to early–mid-Holocene coniferous forests to late Holocene Tibetan shrubland vegetation types are reconstructed for Lake Naleng on the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau. Procrustes and PROTEST analyses reveal that intertaxa relationships inferred from modern sedaDNA datasets align with past relationships generally, while intertaxa relationships derived from modern pollen spectra are mostly significantly different from fossil pollen relationships. Overall, we conclude that a quantitative sedaDNA-based vegetation reconstruction using MAT is more reliable than a pollen-based reconstruction, probably because of the more straightforward taphonomy that can relate sedDNA ...
author2 China Scholarship Council
H2020 European Research Council
format Article in Journal/Newspaper
author Liu, Sisi
Li, Kai
Jia, Weihan
Stoof-Leichsenring, Kathleen Rosmarie
Liu, Xingqi
Cao, Xianyong
Herzschuh, Ulrike
author_facet Liu, Sisi
Li, Kai
Jia, Weihan
Stoof-Leichsenring, Kathleen Rosmarie
Liu, Xingqi
Cao, Xianyong
Herzschuh, Ulrike
author_sort Liu, Sisi
title Vegetation Reconstruction From Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau Using Modern Analogue Technique–Comparing Sedimentary (Ancient) DNA and Pollen Data
title_short Vegetation Reconstruction From Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau Using Modern Analogue Technique–Comparing Sedimentary (Ancient) DNA and Pollen Data
title_full Vegetation Reconstruction From Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau Using Modern Analogue Technique–Comparing Sedimentary (Ancient) DNA and Pollen Data
title_fullStr Vegetation Reconstruction From Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau Using Modern Analogue Technique–Comparing Sedimentary (Ancient) DNA and Pollen Data
title_full_unstemmed Vegetation Reconstruction From Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau Using Modern Analogue Technique–Comparing Sedimentary (Ancient) DNA and Pollen Data
title_sort vegetation reconstruction from siberia and the tibetan plateau using modern analogue technique–comparing sedimentary (ancient) dna and pollen data
publisher Frontiers Media SA
publishDate 2021
url http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.668611
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.668611/full
genre Arctic
Tundra
Siberia
genre_facet Arctic
Tundra
Siberia
op_source Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
volume 9
ISSN 2296-701X
op_rights https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
op_doi https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.668611
container_title Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
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