Do extant nearest relatives of thermophile European Cenozoic plant elements reliably reflect climatic signal?

Abstract

Climatic characteristics of selected extant relatives and analogues for palaeotropical and neotropical European Cenozoic plant elements are compared with the proxies derived from comparisons of complete plant assemblages containing the respective elements with analogous extant vegetation. The discrepancies obtained may warn us not to lay too much stress on such actualistic data. Methodologies relying on autecology of the nearest living relatives may thus produce biased and possibly unrealistic proxies. The differences in climatic estimates derived from physiognomical methodologies (e.g., leaf margin analysis and CLAMP) may be explained in this way but more studies in approximations between the Neogene and extant analogous vegetation and climate are needed to provide more objective data.