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A testate amoebae transfer function from Sphagnum-dominated peatlands in the Lesser Khingan Mountains, NE China

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Abstract

We present a testate amoebae training set for building a paleohydrology transfer function. Ninety-one samples were collected from three Sphagnum peatlands in the Lesser Khingan Mountains, NE China. Redundancy analysis revealed that depth to the water table (DWT) and moisture content (% water) are the primary factors that control testate amoebae assemblages. Transfer functions for prediction of these two environmental variables were developed. The root mean square error (RMSEP) for DWT and moisture content were 6.74 cm and 1.49 %, respectively, assessed with “leave-one-out” cross validation. We applied a more robust cross validation method for clustered structure data, “leave-one-site-out,” and the RMSEP of the best performance model increased to 6.90 cm and 1.67 %, but all models still had predictive power. The effect of uneven sampling was tested using new statistical approaches. Greater numbers of samples in the middle range of the gradient yielded smaller RMSEP values than did samples from the extreme wet and dry ends of the spectrum, where there were fewer samples. Our results indicate this training set is a potentially important tool for paleoenvironmental reconstruction in the Lesser Khingan Mountains, NE China. It will contribute to understanding climate change, particularly past monsoon activity, in this region.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a Grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41001121). Students Youbao Pu, Xiaoling Yang, Songmai Wang, and Congyang Wang helped with fieldwork and sample processing. Dr. Matt Amesbury and an anonymous reviewer provided valuable comments on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Peat and Mire, School of Geographical Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China

    Hongkai Li, Shengzhong Wang, Hongyan Zhao & Ming Wang

  2. State Environment Protection Key Laboratory of Wetland and Vegetation Restoration, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China

    Hongkai Li, Shengzhong Wang & Hongyan Zhao

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  1. Hongkai Li
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Correspondence to Hongkai Li.

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ESM Fig. 1

Light microscope images of Hyalosphenia sp.: (a) an empty shell, (b) an encysted amoeba in the shell. The scale represents 20 μm (EPS 45234 kb)

ESM Fig. 2

Optima of testate amoebae taxa versus their tolerances for DWT (EPS 266 kb)

ESM Fig. 3

Relative positions of testate amoebae optima on the DWT gradient for major species in this study and some previous studies. Species presented in more than 15 previous studies are listed here. Results for this study are based on the WA.inv model using a filtered data set, and as reported for other studies. This figure follows Booth 2001) and Payne et al. (2006) (EPS 752 kb)

Supplementary material 4 (DOCX 14 kb)

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Li, H., Wang, S., Zhao, H. et al. A testate amoebae transfer function from Sphagnum-dominated peatlands in the Lesser Khingan Mountains, NE China. J Paleolimnol 54, 189–203 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-015-9846-2

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