Late Quaternary vegetation and fire dynamics on Mount Kenya

Rucina, Stephen M.; Muiruri, Veronica M.; Kinyanjui, Rahab; McGuiness, Katy; Marchant, Robert

doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2009.08.008

Cited by 58 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…The warmer moister climate of the Holocene enabled the tree line to rise in comparison to LGM levels (Rucina et al. ). However, the position of the tree line is currently under high anthropogenic pressure, which is marked by increased fire frequency.…”

Section: Current Position and Dynamics Of The Tree Line In The Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tree line dynamics in the tropical African highlands – identifying drivers and dynamics

Jacob

Annys

Frankl

et al. 2014

J Vegetation Science

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Section: Current Position and Dynamics Of The Tree Line In The Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This has locally resulted in a transition to open vegetation (Bussmann ; Rucina et al. ). The presence of plant species in the Asteraceae , Stoebe kilimandscharica and Protea kilimascharica , often at the tree line, indicates this regular disturbance by high‐altitude fires.…”

Section: Current Position and Dynamics Of The Tree Line In The Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Tree line dynamics in the tropical African highlands – identifying drivers and dynamics

Jacob

Annys

Frankl

et al. 2014

J Vegetation Science

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“…Two hypotheses seek to explain the distribution of these two subspecies in Kenya and Tanzania. The mountain refugia hypothesis (Meixner et al 1989(Meixner et al , 1994(Meixner et al , 2000 proposes that A. m. monticola is a distinct lineage which evolved at an unspecified time in a high altitude forest area and had a large historical distribution during the last glacial maximum, between 21000 and 15000 years BP when forest vegetation shifted about 1000 m downslope (Osmaston 1989;Br€ uhl 1997;Rucina et al 2009). This lineage became isolated on the different mountains they currently inhabit due to climate change and associated changes in vegetation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distinct subspecies or phenotypic plasticity? Genetic and morphological differentiation of mountain honey bees in East Africa

Gruber

Schöning

Otte

et al. 2013

Ecology and Evolution

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Identifying the forces shaping intraspecific phenotypic and genotypic divergence are of key importance in evolutionary biology. Phenotypic divergence may result from local adaptation or, especially in species with strong gene flow, from pronounced phenotypic plasticity. Here, we examine morphological and genetic divergence among populations of the western honey bee Apis mellifera in the topographically heterogeneous East African region. The currently accepted “mountain refugia hypothesis” states that populations living in disjunct montane forests belong to a different lineage than those in savanna habitats surrounding these forests. We obtained microsatellite data, mitochondrial sequences, and morphometric data from worker honey bees collected from feral colonies in three montane forests and corresponding neighboring savanna regions in Kenya. Honey bee colonies from montane forests showed distinct worker morphology compared with colonies in savanna areas. Mitochondrial sequence data did not support the existence of the two currently accepted subspecies. Furthermore, analyses of the microsatellite data with a Bayesian clustering method did not support the existence of two source populations as it would be expected under the mountain refugia scenario. Our findings suggest that phenotypic plasticity rather than distinct ancestry is the leading cause behind the phenotypic divergence observed between montane forest and savanna honey bees. Our study thus corroborates the idea that high gene flow may select for increased plasticity.

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“…Hedberg, 1951Hedberg, , 1964Coetzee, 1967;Van Zinderen Bakker and Coetz, 1988;Hemp, 2005Hemp, , 2006Kiage and Liu, 2006;Street-Perrot et al, 2007;Schüler et al, 2012), here considered equivalent to biomes or ecosystems (Dickinson and Murphy, 1998). In East African savannas and lowland forests, changes in climatic humidity caused significant spatial changes in plant distributions during Pleistocene and Holocene times (Vincens et al, 2005(Vincens et al, , 2007Gasse et al, 2008;Kröpelin et al, 2008;Rucina et al, 2009). Considering the insular setting and the geographical location of Mauritius at w20 S, several mechanisms may have contributed to past environmental change, such as astronomical forcing (Partridge, 1997;Gasse, 2000;deMenocal et al, 2000;Schefuss et al, 2005;Tierney et al, 2008;Verschuren, 2009), changing Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) (Prell et al, 1980), changes in the monsoon system and annual distribution of precipitation (Fleitmann et al, 2007;Vincens et al, 2007;Thomas et al, 2009;Tierney et al, 2011), and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) (Saji et al, 1999;Marchant et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid succession of plant associations on the small ocean island of Mauritius at the onset of the Holocene

Boer

Hooghiemstra

Florens

et al. 2013

Quaternary Science Reviews

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Rapid succession of plant associations on the small ocean island of Mauritius at the onset of the Holocene de Boer, E.J.; Hooghiemstra, H.; Florens, F.B.V.; Baider, C.; Engels, S.; Dakos, V.; Blaauw, M.; Bennett, K.D. Published in:Quaternary Science Reviews DOI:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.02.005 Link to publicationCitation for published version (APA): de Boer, E. J., Hooghiemstra, H., Florens, F. B. V., Baider, C., Engels, S., Dakos, V., ... Bennett, K. D. (2013). Rapid succession of plant associations on the small ocean island of Mauritius at the onset of the Holocene. Quaternary Science Reviews, 68, 114-125. DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2013 General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. a b s t r a c tThe island of Mauritius offers the opportunity to study the poorly understood vegetation response to climate change on a small tropical oceanic island. A high-resolution pollen record from a 10 m long peat core from Kanaka Crater (560 m elevation, Mauritius, Indian Ocean) shows that vegetation shifted from a stable open wet forest Last Glacial state to a stable closed-stratified-tall-forest Holocene state. An ecological threshold was crossed at w11.5 cal ka BP, propelling the forest ecosystem into an unstable period lasting w4000 years. The shift between the two steady states involves a cascade of four abrupt (<150 years) forest transitions in which different tree species dominated the vegetation for a quasi-stable period of respectively~1900,~1100 and~900 years. We interpret the first forest transition as climatedriven, reflecting the response of a small low topography oceanic island where significant spatial biome migration is impossible. The three subsequent forest transitions are not evidently linked to climate events, and are suggested to be driven by internal forest dynamics. The cascade of four consecutive events of species turnover occurred at a remarkably fast rate compared to changes during the preceding and following periods, and might therefore be considered as a composite tipping point in the ecosystem. We hypothesize that wet gallery forest, spatially and temporally stabilized by the drainage system, served as a long lasting reservoir of biodiversity and facilitated a rapid exchange of species with the montane forests to allow for a rapid cascade of pla...

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Late Quaternary vegetation and fire dynamics on Mount Kenya

Cited by 58 publications

References 67 publications

Tree line dynamics in the tropical African highlands – identifying drivers and dynamics

Tree line dynamics in the tropical African highlands – identifying drivers and dynamics

Distinct subspecies or phenotypic plasticity? Genetic and morphological differentiation of mountain honey bees in East Africa

Rapid succession of plant associations on the small ocean island of Mauritius at the onset of the Holocene

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