Abstract
Palms are one of the most common tropical plant groups. They are widespread across lowland tropical forests, but many are found in higher altitudes have more constrained environmental ranges. The limited range of these species makes them particularly useful in paleoecological and paleoclimate reconstructions. Palms produce phytoliths, or silica structures, which are found in their vegetative parts (e.g., wood, leaves, etc.). Recent research has shown that several palms in the lowland tropical forests produce phytoliths that are diagnostic to the sub-family or genus-level. Here we characterize Andean palm phytoliths, and determine whether many of these species can also be identified by their silica structures. All of our sampled Andean palm species produced phytoliths, and we were able to characterize several previously unclassified morphotypes. Some species contained unique phytoliths that did not occur in other species, particularly Ceroxylon alpinium, which is indicative of specific climatic conditions. The differences in the morphologies of the Andean species indicate that palm phytolith analysis is particularly useful in paleoecological reconstructions. Future phytolith analyses will allow researchers to track how these palm species with limited environmental ranges have migrated up and down the Andean slopes as a result of past climatic change. The phytolith analyses can track local-scale vegetation dynamics, whereas pollen, which is commonly used in paleoecological reconstructions, reflects regional-scale vegetation change.
Highlights
Arecaceae is a family of monocotyledonous plants that are important components of tropical ecosystems (Kahn and Mejia, 1990; Henderson et al, 1997; Phillips and Miller, 2002; Kahn and De Granville, 2012)
We identified several new subtypes of globular echinate and conical morphotypes, which were previously characterized by other researchers (e.g., Piperno, 2006; Morcote-Ríos et al, 2016; Figure 1)
We suggest that future identifications of palm phytoliths should be performed using a minimum magnification of 630x, but preferably a magnification of 1,000x
Summary
Arecaceae (palms) is a family of monocotyledonous plants that are important components of tropical ecosystems (Kahn and Mejia, 1990; Henderson et al, 1997; Phillips and Miller, 2002; Kahn and De Granville, 2012). Some of the earliest archaeological sites in the Andes and the Amazon contain evidence of a wide variety of palms consumed by people (Morcote-Rios and Bernal, 2001; Gnecco, 2003; Mora and Camargo, 2003). Some palm species have constrained environmental tolerances or tend to be quite rare in the landscape, in the mid-elevation regions (i.e., 1,000–3,000 m above sea level, hereafter masl) along the eastern Andean flank (Moraes et al, 1995; Henderson et al, 1997). Because the specific environmental optima vary between Andean palm species, palms are important indicators of past climatic and ecosystem change in palaeoecological records (Bush et al, 2005, 2011; Schiferl et al, 2017); (Huisman et al, in revision)
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