Estimating pollen diversity from pollen accumulation rates: a method to assess taxonomic richness in the landscape

A new method is presented to estimate pollen diversity on the basis of pollen-accumulation rates, rather than on a constant count of pollen as is traditional. Accumulation-based estimates of pollen diversity can be interpreted in terms of taxonomic richness on the landscape. The traditionally used constant-count estimates, on the other hand, reflect the evenness in the vegetation much more than its taxonomic richness, but they reflect this in a distorted way because of the real but mostly unknown differences in pollen productivity among plant taxa. Pollen-accumulation rates might also be used to estimate turnover of plant species from pollen assemblages. Differences in pollen productivity among plant taxa also have effects on various other data-summarizing techniques, including estimates of rates of change.