Journal article
Initial Expansion of C4 Vegetation in Australia During the Late Pliocene
JW Andrae, FA McInerney, PJ Polissar, JMK Sniderman, S Howard, PA Hall, SR Phelps
Geophysical Research Letters | AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION | Published : 2018
DOI: 10.1029/2018GL077833
Abstract
Since the late Miocene, plants using the C4 photosynthetic pathway have increased to become major components of many tropical and subtropical ecosystems. However, the drivers for this expansion remain under debate, in part because of the varied histories of C4 vegetation on different continents. Australia hosts the highest dominance of C4 vegetation of all continents, but little is known about the history of C4 vegetation there. Carbon isotope ratios of plant waxes from scientific ocean drilling sediments off north-western Australia reveal the onset of Australian C4 expansion at ~3.5 Ma, later than in many other regions. Pollen analysis from the same sediments reveals increasingly open C3-do..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors declare no conflict of interest. Data can be found in Data Sets S1 though S5 in the supporting information. Supplementary text and figures can be found in the supporting information. This research utilized samples and data provided by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). Funding for this research was provided by an Australian IODP Office Special Post-Cruise Analytical Funding grant awarded to J. W. A and F. A. M., an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT110100100793) awarded to F. A. M., an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and University of Adelaide Faculty of Sciences Divisional Scholarship awarded to J. W. A. and S. H., and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to S. R. P (DGE 16-44869). Isotopic analyses were supported by the Climate Center at LDEO. Thank you to David Fox and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments. We acknowledge the Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network for provision of plant survey data and samples. Thank you to Kristine Nielson, Emrys Leitch, Stefan Caddy-Retalic, and Nicole deRoberts for research support.