Potential and significance of leaf trait changes of long lived species during the Paleogene

Fossil plants are regard to be excellent proxies to trace paleoclimatic and paleoatmospheric changes. The vegetational response to changing paleoclimate and paleoatmospheric conditions has already been known for a long time and is well documented for the Paleogene of central Europe. Methods such as the Coexistence Approach (CA) and the Climate Leaf Analyses Multivariate Program (CLAMP) analyze the composition of fossil plant assemblages. Changes in paleoclimate and CO2 through time can be tracked also via changes in morphometric parameters such as leaf area, leaf size and leaf shape or epidermal (cuticular) parameters as for instance stomata density (SD), stomata index (SI) and stomata size. The multivariate gas exchange model combines morphometric and cuticular parameters, together with assumed paleoclimate conditions and physiological data of nearest living equivalents to determine paleo-CO2. Plants show differences in morphological, morphometric and cuticular parameters, not only in response to overall changes in CO2 and climate, but also due to their immobility and dependency on light intensity, water availability and soil conditions at the respective site. In this study leaf traits of both Rhodomyrtophyllum reticulosum and Platanus neptuni from 23 sites in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic covering a time span from the late early Eocene to the early Miocene of central Europe are investigated. Alongside the stratigraphic range of the data set, which allows for tracing long-term variations in the respective parameters, sites of different depositional facies types (maar deposits, marine deposits and fluvial-lacustrine deposits) were included. It has been proven that the investigation of single species and their correspondence to global and regional paleoclimatic and paleoatmospheric shifts has to be done considering differences in the respective depositional setting and thus habitat. Regional effects influence the peculiarity of leaf traits greatly which implies that regional and site related patterns partly overweigh global correspondences. The weak correlation of leaf trait changes to global changes in paleoclimate and CO2 implies that the long-lived species Rhodomyrtophyllum reticulosum and Platanus neptuni are not suitable to track these changes due their high plasticity and adaptability. The long stratigraphic range of the investigated species therefore point out the high adaption potential which by implication leads to a lower correspondence to global paleoclimatic changes. The determination of crucial leaf traits and their response to overall changes in paleoclimate and CO2 hampers the fact that the fossil record bears mainly elements present in azonal vegetation which is caused by predominantly burial of fossils in aquatic bodies. Hence, long-lived species could have been survived these remarkable changes in climate from the end of the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum to the Oligocene icehouse world due to their occurrence in azonal assemblages, buffering global effects in climate variability to a certain degree. The investigation of long-lived fossil species therefore has to be done by coincident consideration of the composition of the whole plant assemblage, which reflects both azonal and partly zonal vegetation of the respective time interval