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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).

We have limited knowledge about the biodiversity and vulnerability of peatlands in the lower-altitude mountains of the Iberian Peninsula, largely because peatlands have not been routinely differentiated from other habitat types in Spain. Understanding is now developing about the ecology of peatlands in central Spain, but they are already under severe threat of conversion and degradation. In this article we describe the results of a field survey and literature review study to characterise and describe the current condition of peatlands in the Toledo Mountains in terms of their typology, the representation of habitat types protected by European (EU) designations, threats, endangered plant species, and conservation status. Our results suggest that the principal threats are overgrazing by domestic animals and ungulates (red deer and wild boar), fire, expansion of cereal crops, drying-out and erosion. Disturbance is most severe in areas that are not protected by nature conservation designations, where peatlands are especially vulnerable to damage arising from human activities.

El verderón serrano (Serinus citrinella) es una especie paleártica endémica que cría en zonas montañosas subalpinas de la Europa occidental templada. Esta especie parece que está sufriendo un gran declive en su área de distribución septentrional, principalmente en la Selva Negra y en el NE de los Alpes. Se han propuesto muchas razones para dicha disminución, pero todas ellas estaban relacionadas con los hábitats de cría. Dado que esta especie lleva a cabo una migración altitudinal, y que durante el invierno puede utilizar habitats muy distintos, se precisaría un buen conocimiento de los patrones de distribución y de los hábitats utilizados fuera del período reproductor, para poder establecer unas directrices de conservación y gestión adecuadas. Sin embargo, esta información es muy escasa. El propósito de este estudio es determinar el hábitat común utilizado por los verderones serranos en en nordeste de España durante el invierno, para analizar la idoneidad del habitat, y estudiar los movimientos, investigando el origen de la aves que invernan en Cataluña. La distribución se modelizó utilizando el análisis discriminante y la modelización de entropía máxima con los datos registrados desde 1972 al 2009 sobre la presencia de esta especie durante el invierno en Cataluña. Los resultados evidenciaron que la presencia de bosques abiertos mixtos de pino negral (Pinus nigra subsp. salzmanii) y pino silvestre o albar (Pinus sylvestris), con numerosas tierras de cultivo y plantas arvenses, en areas submediterráneas típicas en las que las temperaturas templadas de finales de invierno (días soleados) facilitan la apertura de las piñas, fueron las variables ecológicas y bioclimáticas claves responsables de la distribución del verderón serrano en invierno (valores AUC o área bajo la curva: datos de entrenamiento AUC = 0,955; datos del test AUC = 0,953). Analizamos las recuperaciones (N = 238) de 2.368 aves anilladas en las áreas de invernada y 12.648 aves anilladas en localizaciones subalpinas en los Pirineos adyacentes, desde 1977 al 2004. Los resultados de los datos de recuperación de anillas muestran que en el área de estudio se capturaron aves procedentes de muy diversas localizaciones dentro del área de distribución de la especie estudiada, incluyendo aves transpirenaicas procedentes de los Alpes. Ello enfatiza la gran movilidad de las poblaciones del verderón serrano hasta alcanzar las áreas de invernada. Desde el punto de vista de la conservación, la gran importancia de los pinos (principalmente del negral) para la distribución invernal de esta especie pone de manifiesto que cualquier amenaza para los pinos, especialmente los incendios forestales, tendrá grandes efectos adversos sobre las poblaciones del verderón serrano. Palabras clave: Verderón serrano, Invernada, Selección del hábitat, Idoneidad del hábitat, Desplazamientos, Conservación, Pino negral, Pino silvestre, Pino albar.

Presentamos una aproximación fitogeográfica de Abies alba Mill. en la vertiente española de la cordillera pirenaica, basada en “Modelos de Distribución de Especies” (MDEs) y una revisión del registro fósil paleopalinológico cuaternario más sobresaliente de los Pirineos. Articulando los resultados derivados del MDEs (perspectiva topoclimática), y una revisión del registro fósil palinológico cuaternario de los Pirineos (enfoque climático y antrópico), intentaremos realizar una interpretación histórica de la dinámica de estos bosques. El modelo presentado revela que los abetales españoles ocupan en la actualidad el 30% de su potencial geográfico óptimo y ofrece pruebas suficientes que demuestran que A. alba podría haber vivido en un gradiente altitudinal más amplio que el actual. Este trabajo sugiere el empleo de los MDEs para reforzar hipótesis acerca de la distribución cuaternaria de A. alba en la península Iberica, así como para ubicar geográficamente refugios que permitan la pervivencia a largo plazo de esta especie.

The Black Death (1347-1352 CE) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe's population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic's causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, 'big data palaeoecology', which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death's mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death's mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The origin of modern disjunct plant distributions in the Brazilian Highlands with strong floristic affinities to distant montane rainforests of isolated mountaintops in the northeast and northern Amazonia and the Guyana Shield remains unknown. We tested the hypothesis that these unexplained biogeographical patterns reflect former ecosystem rearrangements sustained by widespread plant migrations possibly due to climatic patterns that are very dissimilar from present-day conditions. To address this issue, we mapped the presence of the montane arboreal taxa Araucaria, Podocarpus, Drimys, Hedyosmum, Ilex, Myrsine, Symplocos, and Weinmannia, and cool-adapted plants in the families Myrtaceae, Ericaceae, and Arecaceae (palms) in 29 palynological records during Heinrich Stadial 1 Event, encompassing a latitudinal range of 30°S to 0°S. In addition, Principal Component Analysis and Species Distribution Modelling were used to represent past and modern habitat suitability for Podocarpus and Araucaria. The data reveals two long-distance patterns of plant migration connecting south/southeast to northeastern Brazil and Amazonia with a third short route extending from one of them. Their paleofloristic compositions suggest a climatic scenario of abundant rainfall and relative lower continental surface temperatures, possibly intensified by the effects of polar air incursions forming cold fronts into the Brazilian Highlands. Although these taxa are sensitive to changes in temperature, the combined pollen and speleothems proxy data indicate that this montane rainforest expansion during Heinrich Stadial 1 Event was triggered mainly by a less seasonal rainfall regime from the subtropics to the equatorial region.

This study analysed the seasonal and intradiurnal behaviour of fungal spores from Alternaria and Cladosporium on air samples collected in the city of Almeria (SE Spain), as well as the influence that meteorological parameters have on the concentration of these type of spores. Aerobiological sampling was made during four years (1998-2001) using a Hirst-type volumetric spore trap. Spores of Alternaria and Cladosporium were detected throughout the year, reaching the highest concentrations from May to October. The diurnal patterns of these taxons reflected a presence similar of spores during a 24 h period, with values horary close to 4% of total sampling daily. The correlations show a positive association with temperature, hours of sunshine and accumulate rainfall, but negative with daily rainfall.

The seasonal and daily variations in the concentrations of certain fungal spores in the atmosphere of the city of Granada (South of Spain) have been studied. Sampling was carried out in 1994 using a Hirst-type volumetric spore trap. The spores analysed correspond to the genera Alternaria, Cladosporium (Cladosporium cladosporioides and Cladosporium herbarum), Fusarium, Stemphylium and Ustilago. The seasonal-variation data obtained indicate that most of these spores are abundant throughout the year, with the exception of Fusarium, which was only present in trace amounts. The maximum concentrations of Alternaria, Cladosporium and Stemphylium are obtained during two sharp peaks in spring and autumn, with the minimum values being recorded during the summer and winter months; Fusarium and Ustilago spores are most abundant in autumn and winter. Although intradiurnal-variation models vary from one taxon to the next, the highest levels are generally recorded after 12:00 hours, with maximum levels being obtained in the afternoon.