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Do soil phytoliths accurately represent plant communities in a temperate region? A case study of Northeast China

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Abstract

Modern soil phytoliths can potentially provide analogues for phytolith assemblages from archaeological and palaeoecological contexts. To assess the reliability of soil phytoliths for representing different plant communities, we analysed phytoliths in surface soils and parent plants at 65 sites representing five types of regional vegetation in Northeast China. The results demonstrated that surface soil phytolith assemblages could clearly differentiate samples from herbaceous and woody communities, and samples from Poaceae and non-Poaceae communities could be separated statistically. In addition, woody communities could be differentiated into a broadleaf-Poaceae community, a broadleaf-non-Poaceae community and a conifer and broadleaf-non-Poaceae community, except for some overlapping samples. Soil phytolith assemblages are thus able to differentiate regional vegetation types into different plant community types. In the present study, soil phytoliths represented about 30% of the phytoliths present in the aboveground vegetation. In addition, soil phytoliths from different communities reflected the aboveground vegetation with slightly different degrees of accuracy, and in addition different morphotypes exhibited different degrees of representational bias. Some morphotypes (e.g. rondel, elongate psilate, lanceolate) overrepresented the abundance of the associated plant taxa; morphotypes such as tracheid, conical epidermal, stomata and others under-represented the original plant richness; and other morphotypes, e.g. saddle, trapeziform sinuate, scutiform, were in good agreement with the numbers of plant taxa in the plot inventory. Thus, any quantitative palaeovegetation reconstruction using phytoliths should begin with the calibration of soil phytolith assemblages. We conclude that our findings provide improved phytolith analogues for different plant communities, with applications in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, and they also provide additional insights into the mechanisms of phytolith production and deposition.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41771214, 41471164), the National Key R&D Plan (Grant No. 2016YFA0602301) and the National Natural Science Foundation for the Youth of China (Grant No. 41602194).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geographical Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China

    Guizai Gao, Dongmei Jie, Dehui Li, Nannan Li, Jichen Shi & Chengcheng Leng

  2. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and Vegetation Restoration, Changchun, 130024, China

    Guizai Gao, Dongmei Jie, Dehui Li, Nannan Li, Jichen Shi & Chengcheng Leng

  3. Key Laboratory for Vegetation Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China

    Guizai Gao, Dongmei Jie, Dehui Li, Nannan Li, Jichen Shi & Chengcheng Leng

  4. School of Environment, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China

    Yong Wang

  5. College of Resource and Environment Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410001, China

    Lidan Liu

  6. School of Resources Environment and Tourism, Anyang Normal University, Anyang, 455000, China

    Hongyan Liu

Authors
  1. Guizai Gao
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  2. Dongmei Jie
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  3. Yong Wang
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  4. Lidan Liu
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  5. Hongyan Liu
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  6. Dehui Li
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  8. Jichen Shi
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  9. Chengcheng Leng
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Dongmei Jie or Yong Wang.

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Communicated by Y. Zhao.

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Gao, G., Jie, D., Wang, Y. et al. Do soil phytoliths accurately represent plant communities in a temperate region? A case study of Northeast China. Veget Hist Archaeobot 27, 753–765 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-018-0670-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-018-0670-2

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