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Abstract Detail



Biogeography

Mander, Luke [1].

The Latitudinal Distribution of Morphological Diversity among Holocene Angiosperm Pollen Grains from eastern North America and Colombia.

Current knowledge about the biogeographic patterns of biodiversity is based mostly on taxonomic diversity, which is typically measured as the number of species or higher taxa. In this exploratory study I analyse 24 previously published Holocene lake core pollen records in order to assess how the morphological diversity of angiosperm pollen grains varies with latitude on a transect that includes eastern North America and a single site in Colombia. I employ a system of eight discrete characters to describe first-order features of angiosperm pollen morphology and use algorithms written in the Python programming language to assess their morphological diversity. There is evidence of high levels of pollen morphotype endemism in the tropical biome, but there is no substantial latitudinal variation in the morphological diversity of Holocene pollen assemblages either at the site or biome-level. In the sites investigated there is no clear relationship between a sample's taxonomic diversity and its morphological diversity and the implications of this decoupling are discussed.


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1 - The Open University, Gass Building, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

Keywords:
diversity
angiosperms
LDG
pollen
morphology.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 4, Biogeography
Location: 105/Mayo Civic Center
Date: Monday, July 23rd, 2018
Time: 11:45 AM
Number: 4015
Abstract ID:860
Candidate for Awards:None


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