ArticleEcology letters2022
Pollen-based reconstruction reveals the impact of the onset of agriculture on plant functional trait composition.
Article in Ecology letters, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- NAMPHORA: a fossil and modern pollen database from Northern Africa and adjacent Mediterranean and Arabian regions.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Observed and dark diversity dynamics over millennial time scales: fast life-history traits linked to expansion lags of plants in northern Europe.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Pollen-based reconstruction reveals the impact of the onset of agriculture on plant functional trait composition.Ecology letters · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
The onset of agriculture improved the capacity of ecosystems to produce food, but inadvertently altered other vital ecosystem functions. Plant traits play a central role in determining ecosystem properties, therefore we investigated how the onset of agriculture in Europe changed plant trait composition using 78 pollen records. Using a novel Bayesian approach for reconstructing plant trait composition from pollen records, we provide a robust method that can account for trait variability within pollen types. We estimate an overall four-fold decrease in plant size through agriculture and associated decreases in leaf and seed size. We show an increase in niche space towards the resource-acquisitive end of the leaf economic spectrum. Decreases in leaf phosphorus might have been caused by nutrient depletion through grazing and burning. Our results show that agriculture, from its start, has likely been gradually impacting biogeochemical cycles through altered vegetation composition.
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