A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Soil phytolith assemblages reflect palm community composition in western Amazonia
Authors: McMichael, Crystal N.H.; Guerra, Daniel; Witteveen, Nina H.; Heijink, Britte M.; Zwarts, Annabel; Zuquim, Gabriela; Balslev, Henrik; Ruokolainen, Kalle; Tuomisto, Hanna
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Publication year: 2026
Journal: Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology
Article number: 105443
Volume: 344
ISSN: 0034-6667
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.revpalbo.2025.105443
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.revpalbo.2025.105443
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/500446749
Humans have domesticated and used palms in tropical forests for millennia. The extent to which past human palm use affects modern tropical systems remains relatively unexplored due to lack of a good fossil record. However, palms produce an array of phytoliths, which are siliceous cell structures that preserve well in the soil even after the organic plant material has decayed. Phytoliths vary in morphology and can be identified to group level and sometimes even to species. We analyzed if palm phytolith assemblages sampled from the soil reflect palm species compositions and abundances in 63 western Amazonian transects. Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) and Mantel tests showed that palm communities and phytolith assemblages had similar turnover patterns. Negative binomial generalized linear models indicated that the abundances of nine of the 13 common palm genera were significantly related to a combination of soil cation concentrations, grass phytolith percentages, and palm phytolith PCoA axis scores. These results suggest that phytoliths have potential as quantitative indicators of changes in palm abundances in paleoecological and archaeological reconstructions.
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Funding information in the publication:
C.N.H.M. is funded by ERC Starting Grant 853394, which also supported N.H.W. and B.M.H. H.B. was funded from Natur og Univers, Det Frie Forskningsråd, grant no. 4181-00158 and 9040-00136B and European Commission contract No. 212631. H.T. acknowledges funding from the Research Council of Finland (grants 139959, 273737, and 344733, which was obtained through the BiodivERsA 2019-2020 Joint COFUND CAll and supported G.Z., Aarhus University Research Foundation (grant AUFF-E-2023-7-3, which supported K.R., and the Danish National Research Foundation grant DNRF179.
