Emergence patterns of novelty in European vegetation assemblages over the past 15 000 years

Walter Finsinger (1) , Thomas Giesecke (2) , Simon Brewer (3) , Michelle Leydet (4)

1 UMR ISEM - Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier
2 Department of Palynology and Climate Dynamics
3 University of Utah
4 IMBE - Institut méditerranéen de biodiversité et d'écologie marine et continentale

Plant communities are not stable over time and biological novelty is predicted to emerge due to climate change, the introduction of exotic species and land-use change. However, the rate at which this novelty may arise over longer time periods has so far received little attention. We reconstruct the emergence of novelty in Europe for a set of baseline conditions over the past 15000years to assess past rates of emergence and investigate underlying causes. The emergence of novelty is baseline specific and, during the early-Holocene, was mitigated by the rapid spread of plant taxa. Although novelty generally increases as a function of time, climate and human-induced landscape changes contributed to a non-linear post-glacial trajectory of novelty with jumps corresponding to periods of rapid changes. Emergence of novelty accelerated during the past 1000years. Historical cultural landscapes experienced a faster novelty development due to the contribution from anthropogenic land-cover changes.

Mots clés: Biological novelty; EPD; Europe; pollen; post-glacial

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement; Sciences de la Terre; Interfaces continentales, environnement

Walter Finsinger, Thomas Giesecke, Simon Brewer, Michelle Leydet. Emergence patterns of novelty in European vegetation assemblages over the past 15 000 years. Ecology Letters, 2017, 20 (3), pp.336-346. ⟨10.1111/ele.12731⟩. ⟨hal-01681566⟩