INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE SCALE VEGETATION ASSESSMENT USING SURFACE SOIL AND BEE POLLEN DATA IN THE NILGIRIS AND THE COROMANDEL COAST, SOUTH INDIA - VISUALIZING POLLEN AS A REMOTE BIOLOGICAL SENSOR

J. Lazar, S. Prasad, R. Navya, D. De Simone, K. Anupama

Modern pollen analogues remain a powerful tool in Quaternary palynology but classically the most favored repositories are moss cushions and surface soils. Here we use both surface soils and bee pollen to characterize modern pollen spectra from contrasting landscapes, evaluate their potential as biological proxies complementing each other in reconstructing vegetation comprised of anemophilous and entomophilous plants. The bee pollen assemblages are from honeycombs and corbicular loads from Apis cerana and A. florea. By framing classical palynology as an inherently geospatial sensor, we offer an integrative approach to landscape-level ecological analysis and generate baseline data on pollen transport mechanisms that remain less explored in the tropics using a case study in southern India in the upper montane Nilgiris and Coromandel coast. The proposed approach tweaks the standard protocol to fit better the tropics where, wind pollination is not the predominant mode and not much is understood about what we may miss in the record or what may be over represented. This also recognizes pollen analyses as a complementary method to understand the foraging preferences of native honeybees. Comparative analysis of the thirty-four samples (comprising >120,000 microscopically enumerated grains, with a target of 1,000 grains per soil sample and significantly higher counts for bee-pollen samples) revealed a total richness of 151 pollen taxa with distinct exclusivity observed in each source. Data analyses broadly illustrate the potential to further integrate modern pollen data from diverse sources in the same sites and the same season to help quantify pollen-vegetation relationships more robustly in the monsoon-affected South Asian tropics.