TY - JOUR
T1 - Proxy comparison in ancient peat sediments
T2 - Pollen, macrofossil and plant DNA
AU - Parducci, Laura
AU - Väliranta, Minna
AU - Sakari Salonen, J.
AU - Ronkainen, Tiina
AU - Matetovici, Irina
AU - Fontana, Sonia L.
AU - Eskola, Tiina
AU - Sarala, Pertti
AU - Suyama, Yoshihisa
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/1/19
Y1 - 2015/1/19
N2 - We compared DNA, pollen and macrofossil data obtained from Weichselian interstadial (age more than 40 kyr) and Holocene (maximum age 8400 cal yr BP) peat sediments from northern Europe and used them to reconstruct contemporary floristic compositions at two sites. The majority of the samples provided plant DNA sequences of good quality with success amplification rates depending on age. DNA and sequencing analysis provided five plant taxa from the older site and nine taxa from the younger site, corresponding to 7% and 15%of the total number of taxa identified by the three proxies together. At both sites, pollen analysis detected the largest (54) and DNA the lowest (10) number of taxa, but five of theDNAtaxawere not detectedbypollenandmacrofossils. The finding of a larger overlap between DNA and pollen than between DNA and macrofossils proxies seems to go against our previous suggestion based on lacustrine sediments that DNA originates principally from plant tissues and less from pollen. At both sites, we also detected Quercus spp. DNA, but few pollen grains were found in the record, and these are normally interpreted as long-distance dispersal. We confirm that in palaeoecological investigations, sedimentary DNA analysis is less comprehensive than classical morphological analysis, but is a complementary and important tool to obtain a more complete picture of past flora.
AB - We compared DNA, pollen and macrofossil data obtained from Weichselian interstadial (age more than 40 kyr) and Holocene (maximum age 8400 cal yr BP) peat sediments from northern Europe and used them to reconstruct contemporary floristic compositions at two sites. The majority of the samples provided plant DNA sequences of good quality with success amplification rates depending on age. DNA and sequencing analysis provided five plant taxa from the older site and nine taxa from the younger site, corresponding to 7% and 15%of the total number of taxa identified by the three proxies together. At both sites, pollen analysis detected the largest (54) and DNA the lowest (10) number of taxa, but five of theDNAtaxawere not detectedbypollenandmacrofossils. The finding of a larger overlap between DNA and pollen than between DNA and macrofossils proxies seems to go against our previous suggestion based on lacustrine sediments that DNA originates principally from plant tissues and less from pollen. At both sites, we also detected Quercus spp. DNA, but few pollen grains were found in the record, and these are normally interpreted as long-distance dispersal. We confirm that in palaeoecological investigations, sedimentary DNA analysis is less comprehensive than classical morphological analysis, but is a complementary and important tool to obtain a more complete picture of past flora.
KW - Ancient DNA
KW - Barcoding
KW - Holocene
KW - Plant macrofossils
KW - Pollen
KW - Weichselian interstadial
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84916232531&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1098/rstb.2013.0382
DO - 10.1098/rstb.2013.0382
M3 - Article
C2 - 25487333
AN - SCOPUS:84916232531
VL - 370
JO - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
JF - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
SN - 0962-8436
IS - 1660
ER -