The “Mediterranean Forest”: A Perspective for Vegetation History Reconstruction

Starting from the multifaceted meaning of “Mediterranean”, this thematic review wishes to reconnect the palaeobotanical with the phytogeographical approach in the reconstruction of the Mediterranean Forest of the past. The use of the term “Mediterranean” is somewhat ambiguous in its common use, and has not an unequivocal meaning in different research fields. In botany, geographical-floristic studies produce maps based on the distribution of the plant species; floristic-ecological studies, produce maps that deal with the distribution of the plant communities and their relationships with different habitats. This review reports on the different use of the term “Mediterranean” in geographical or floristic studies, and on the way climate and plant distributions are used to define the Mediterranean area. The Mediterranean Forest through the palynological records is then shortly reported on. Pollen analysis may be employed to reconstruct the Mediterranean Forest of the past but a number of problems make this a difficult task: low pollen preservation, lack of diagnostic features at low taxonomical level, and low pollen production of species which form the Mediterranean Forests. Variable images of this vegetation are visible in different landscapes, but the Mediterranean Forest often remains a sort of “ghost forest” in pollen spectra from the Mediterranean Region

Altered feeding behavior and immune competence in paper wasps : A case of parasite manipulation?

Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Rita Cervo, Stefano Turillazzi and the members of the Florence Group for the Study of Social Wasps, first of all to Irene Pepiciello, for their assistance during this study, both in the field and in the laboratory. The authors also thank two anonymous Reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Financial support to LB was provided by the University of Florence.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Ancient oral microbiomes support gradual Neolithic dietary shifts towards agriculture

The human microbiome has recently become a valuable source of information about host life and health. To date little is known about how it may have evolved during key phases along our history, such as the Neolithic transition towards agriculture. Here, we shed light on the evolution experienced by the oral microbiome during this transition, comparing Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers with Neolithic and Copper Age farmers that populated a same restricted area in Italy. We integrate the analysis of 76 dental calculus oral microbiomes with the dietary information derived from the identification of embedded plant remains. We detect a stronger deviation from the hunter-gatherer microbiome composition in the last part of the Neolithic, while to a lesser extent in the early phases of the transition. Our findings demonstrate that the introduction of agriculture affected host microbiome, supporting the hypothesis of a gradual transition within the investigated populations

The Botanical Record of Archaeobotany Italian Network - BRAIN: a cooperative network, database and website

Con autorización de la revista para autores CSIC[EN] The BRAIN (Botanical Records of Archaeobotany Italian Network) database and network was developed by the cooperation of archaeobotanists working on Italian archaeological sites. Examples of recent research including pollen or other plant remains in analytical and synthetic papers are reported as an exemplar reference list. This paper retraces the main steps of the creation of BRAIN, from the scientific need for the first research cooperation to the website which has a free online access since 2015.Peer reviewe

"Mediterranean forest": towards a better definition for vegetation history

Palaeobotany and Archaeobotany deal with the reconstruction of flora and vegetation changes over long term time, and this is especially developed by pollen analysis (e.g. De Beaulieau et al. 2005; Jalut et al. 2009; Roberts et al. 2011; Sadori et al. 2014; Magri et al. 2015). Starting from detailed study of limited cases, wide-ranging issues overcome local events to improve knowledge on the cause-and-effect patterns which determined broad palaeoenvironmental events. Indeed, local studies are not only the basis for general reconstructions, but their synthesis can confirm, shape or even modify the current reference schemes of vegetation history. Reaching a coherent reconstruction from diverse reference sources basically requires reassembling different information within the same scheme, a very laborious job that hides many difficulties. One of the biggest difficulties is the inhomogeneity of terminology especially that concerning the references to the vegetation types. The studies of plant remains provide lists of plants that better deal with flora than with vegetation, but plant communities are relevant to landscape reconstruction and their names are commonly quoted in papers. However, several problems arise when these terms are used in a generic way or have different meaning according to the different botanists and palaeoecologists. Several of the most relevant cases where found related to the Mediterranean concept: climate, forest, flora and so on. This contribution, based on personal experiences, wants to focus on this problem, without making any claims to solve it. ... Dealing with multidisciplinary studies, the use of terms concerning the plant communities is of key importance in palynology applied to environmental reconstructions. This research wants to be a contribution to the use of a precise, common terminology in order to facilitate the legibility of the data and their use in the reconstruction of the vegetation history at large scale

Palynology for the Mediterranean vegetation history: human-environment interactions in a changing climate

The Mediterranean basin has always featured, and still has, extremely rich environmental biodiversity. This natural richness and variety has been enriched and conditioned by the development of several cultures. A huge set of biological archives provides evidences of flora and vegetation changes in the Mediterranean regions along time. These changes have occurred not only during the distant past, but also in the recent one. Altogether they determined the shape of the present-day plant landscape. Palynology has been extensively used to reconstruct different scenarios through the geological times. Besides many expected results, some surprises were found. It is not surprising that a consistent contingent of subtropical taxa was still present in the Italian Pliocene flora (Bertini and Martinetto 2011, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 304: 230-246; Sadori et al. 2010, Quaternary International, 225: 44–57) and that steppe and grassland formations covered in most occasions the Mediterranean lands during glacial times (Bertini 2010, Quaternary International, 225: 5-24). On the contrary, the presence of dense oak forests in central Sicily around 9000 years ago (Sadori and Narcisi 2001, The Holocene, 11: 655-671), the expansions of Abies alba woods along the central Tyrrhenian coast until mid Holocene (Bellini et al. 2009, The Holocene, 19: 1161-1172), and the persistence of pine forests in central Spain until the last millennia (Carrión et al. 2010, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 162: 458–475) could be puzzling. If we consider the vegetation changes occurred in the last millennia we have to admit they are the results of interlaced environmental and cultural changes (Mercuri and Sadori 2013, chapter 30, The Mediterranean Sea: its history and present challenges. Springer, Dordrecht; Sadori et al. 2010, Plant Biosystems, 144: 940 – 951). Mediterranean habitats have been continuously transformed by climatic changes occurring at a global scale. In the meantime, the environment has been exploited and the landscape shaped by different human groups and societies (Mercuri et al. 2011, The Holocene, 21: 189-206; Kouli 2013, Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 21: 267-278; Mercuri et al. 2013, Quaternary International 303: 22-42). Joint actions of increasing dryness, climate oscillations, and human impact are hard to disentangle, and this becomes particularly true after the mid-Holocene (Roberts et al. 2011, The Holocene, 21: 3-13; Sadori et al. 2011, The Holocene, 21: 117-129). Important changes in Mediterranean vegetation seem to have coincided either with marked increases in social complexity or with enhanced aridity during the Holocene, or with both of them

Sharing the Agrarian Knowledge with Archaeology: First Evidence of the Dimorphism of Vitis Pollen from the Middle Bronze Age of N Italy (Terramara Santa Rosa di Poviglio)

The recovery of inaperturate pollen from functionally female flowers in archaeological layers opens the question of a possible pollen-based discrimination between wild and domesticated Vitis vinifera in prehistoric times. Pollen analysis applied to archaeology has not routinely considered the existence of pollen dimorphism in Vitis, a well-known trait in the field of agrarian studies. Therefore, the inaperturate shape of grapevine pollen is ignored by studies on the archaeobotanical history of viticulture. In this paper we investigate pollen morphology of the domesticated and wild subspecies of V. vinifera, and report the first evidence of inaperturate Vitis pollen from an archaeological site. We studied exemplar cases of plants with hermaphroditic flowers, belonging to the subspecies vinifera with fully developed male and female organs, cases of dioecious plants with male or female flowers, belonging to the wild subspecies sylvestris and cases of V. vinifera subsp. vinifera with morphologically hermaphroditic but functionally female flowers. The pollen produced by hermaphroditic and male flowers is usually trizonocolporate; the pollen produced by female flowers is inaperturate. This paper reports on the inaperturate pollen of Vitis found in an archeological site of the Po Plain, Northern Italy. The site dated to the Bronze Age, which is known to have been a critical age for the use of this plant with a transition from wild to domesticated Vitis in central Mediterranean. Can the inaperturate Vitis pollen be a marker of wild Vitis vinifera in prehistoric times? Palynology suggests a possible new investigation strategy on the ancient history of the wild and cultivated grapevine. The pollen dimorphism also implies a different production and dispersal of pollen of the wild and the domesticated subspecies. Grapevine plants are palynologically different from the other Mediterranean “cultural trees”. In fact, Olea, Juglans and Castanea, which are included in the OJC index, have the same pollen morphology and the same pollen dispersal, in wild and domesticated plants. In contrast, the signal of Vitis pollen in past records may be different depending on the hermaphroditic or dioecious subspecies

Stratigraphy, palaeopedology and palynology of late pleistocene and holocene deposits in the landward sector of the lagoon of venice (Italy), in relation to the caranto level

The present investigation brings new stratigraphic, palaeopedological and palynological data deriving from the study of 4 cores, bored to a maximum depth of 15 m in the central sector of the Lagoon of Venice, along the inner shores, between the mouth of the Dese river and Porto Marghera. In agreement with the general stratigraphy known from previous studies, the lowermost deposits in the cores are fluvial, radiocarbon dated to 21,000-18,000 BP. The correlation to the stratigraphic framework of the central Veneto plain shows that they belong to the Late Pleistocene fluvial sedimentary system of the Brenta river, the Bassano megafan. The pollen record of this alluvium is characterized by typical hydrophilous plants (Typha, Potamogeton, Nymphaea...), which are referred to swampy environments during the Last Glacial Maximum and the Late Glacial. The compact level known as caranto, located at the top of the fluvial sediments at a depth of some metres from the ground surface, has been recognized as consisting of a set of pedogenetic calcic and gley B and C horizons. This palaeosol formed on the alluvial plain of the distal reaches of the Bassano megafan, in the time span comprised between the deactivation of fluvial processes, which took place after 14,500 BP and probably before the beginning of the Holocene, and the lagoon transgression. As the latter apparently interested the study area only in post roman times, pedogenesis could act for 8000-12,000 years. The definition of the pedogenetic nature of the weathering features is based on macro- and micromorphological observations, associated with physico-chemical analyses. The palynological analysis shows that the caranto level is characterized by a very low pollen content. The Late Holocene lagoonal deposits which cover the caranto palaeosol have dominant subtidal / intertidal mud flat and salt marsh facies, within a context of varying water salinity probably related to river inputs. The presence of a slightly pedogenized level developed in a salt marsh environment, indicates a hiatus in the deposition of the lagoonal sediments. Two radiocarbon datings of the organic O horizons of this soil in two cores show that this discontinuity is of medieval age. Furthermore, they provide a reliable chronostratigraphic support to the determination of the recent relative sea level rise. This latter has been estimated 2.3 m since 1055-954 cal BP to present day in Porto Marghera, EniRisorse area, and 1.1 m since 640-592 cal BP to present day in Porto Marghera-Fusina, ABIBES area

Multistep food plant processing at Grotta Paglicci (Southern Italy) around 32,600 cal B.P.

Residue analyses on a grinding tool recovered at Grotta Paglicci sublayer 23A [32,614 ± 429 calibrated (cal) B.P.], Southern Italy, have demonstrated that early modern humans collected and processed various plants. The recording of starch grains attributable to Avena (oat) caryopses expands our information about the food plants used for producing flour in Europe during the Paleolithic and about the origins of a food tradition persisting up to the present in the Mediterranean basin. The quantitative distribution of the starch grains on the surface of the grinding stone furnished information about the tool handling, confirming its use as a pestle-grinder, as suggested by the wear-trace analysis. The particular state of preservation of the starch grains suggests the use of a thermal treatment before grinding, possibly to accelerate drying of the plants, making the following process easier and faster. The study clearly indicates that the exploitation of plant resources was very important for hunter–gatherer populations, to the point that the Early Gravettian inhabitants of Paglicci were able to process food plants and already possessed a wealth of knowledge that was to become widespread after the dawn of agriculture