10.5061/DRYAD.44770
Bush, Mark B.
Florida Institute of Technology
McMichael, Crystal N. H.
University of Amsterdam
Data from: Holocene variability of an Amazonian hyperdominant
Dryad
dataset
2017
Fossil charcoal
Anthropocene
Palaeoecology and land-use history
Iriartea deltoidea
Forest enrichment
human disturbance
Hyperdominant tree
2017-04-26T00:00:00Z
2017-04-26T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12600
6304 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Little is known regarding the long-term stability or instability of
Amazonian plant communities. We assessed whether the most abundant
species, hyperdominants, may have risen to prominence at the
Pleistocene–Holocene transition, following subsequent changes in moisture
regimes, or as a result of human activity later in the Holocene. The
fossil pollen history of the commonest western Amazonian tree, Iriartea
deltoidea (hereafter Iriartea), is investigated using fossil pollen data
from 13 lakes. Iriartea is a monospecific genus with diagnostic pollen. It
is also considered a ‘useful’ plant, and its abundance could have been
enriched by human action. Iriartea pollen was found to have increased in
abundance in the last 3000 years, but did not show a consistent
relationship with human activity. The suggestion that the hyperdominants
in modern Amazonian forests are a legacy of pre-Columbian people is
unsupported. The abundance of Iriartea pollen is related to increasing
precipitation, not human activity over the last 3000 years. This member of
the hyperdominant category of Amazonian trees has only recently acquired
this status. Synthesis. Our findings are consistent with the observation
that communities in complex systems are ephemeral. The populations of even
the most abundant species can change over a few tens of generations. The
relative abundance of tree species, even in relatively stable systems such
as those of Amazonian floodplains, changes on ecological not evolutionary
timescales.
Holocene Iriartea percentages for thirteen lakes in AmazoniaThe csv file
contains the data for 13 lakes in Amazonia. Columns include site name,
depth, age, Iriartea percentage, and maize percentage (when
available).Iriartea_for_R_age_depth.csv