First records of contemporary testate amoeba assemblages from the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia and potential for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction

© 2020 The Boreas Collegium. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd The Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east of Russia is a substantial landmass that is poorly documented in terms of most elements of biodiversity. Here we provide the first study of modern assemblages of testate amoebae, a widespread group of protists that are particularly abundant in soils. We present a data set of 78 widely distributed samples, including forest, fen, scrub and bog habitats. Testate amoebae are abundant and diverse across Kamchatka with 119 taxa identified. The assemblage is primarily composed of widespread taxa, but rarer occurrences such as Cyclopyxis puteus hint at important biogeographical differences that will require confirmation with molecular data. Assemblages from mineral soils are significantly different from those of peatlands with the former characterized by small idiosome taxa and the latter by larger taxa, often with secretion tests. Water table depth explained significant variance in the peatland samples, supporting the use of testate amoebae in palaeoecological studies. This study adds to our knowledge of the biodiversity of Kamchatka and the global biogeography of protists, and it paves the way for palaeoecological studies to understand long-term environmental change in this region

The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), version 2

The Eurasian (née European) Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) was established in 2013 to provide a public database of high-quality modern pollen surface samples to help support studies of past climate, land cover, and land use using fossil pollen. The EMPD is part of, and complementary to, the European Pollen Database (EPD) which contains data on fossil pollen found in Late Quaternary sedimentary archives throughout the Eurasian region. The EPD is in turn part of the rapidly growing Neotoma database, which is now the primary home for global palaeoecological data. This paper describes version 2 of the EMPD in which the number of samples held in the database has been increased by 60 % from 4826 to 8134. Much of the improvement in data coverage has come from northern Asia, and the database has consequently been renamed the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database to reflect this geographical enlargement. The EMPD can be viewed online using a dedicated map-based viewer at https://empd2.github.io and downloaded in a variety of file formats at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909130 (Chevalier et al., 2019)