Katsi, F., Kent, M.S., Jones, M. et al. (7 more authors) (2024) FTIR spectra from grass pollen: a quest for species-level resolution of Poaceae and Cerealia-type pollen grains. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 321. 105039. ISSN 0034-6667
Abstract
Palynological analysis based on spore and pollen morphology is well established in the field of palaeo-environmental reconstruction but is currently not fully exploited for understanding the history and development of cereal cultivation due to difficulties in visually differentiating between grass species (Poaceae). Here we employ a chemotaxonomic approach, by examining the chemical differences among Poaceae taxa, based on Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy data to overcome problems associated with morphological similarities across the Poaceae family. FTIR spectra of untreated and acetolysed pollen from 19 Poaceae taxa were used in our study. We used both populations and individual pollen grains to explore how we can minimise the effect of Mie scattering (spectral distortions caused by scattering of the incident IR beam) on spectra from individuals. Random forest classification algorithms were applied to explore our ability to differentiate taxa at the species level. We found that pollen grains treated with acetolysis yield better classification results (86% for individuals and 97% for populations) compared to untreated samples (65.7% for individuals and 83% for populations), since they are less affected by Mie scattering. The high classification success at species level on acetolysed individual pollen grains suggests that our chemotaxonomic method holds substantial promise in numerous areas of grass and in particular cereal pollen research, including elucidating the history of agriculture.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The author(s). Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Chemotaxonomy; Poaceae pollen; Individual grains; Acetolysis; Random forest |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jun 2024 13:33 |
Last Modified: | 10 Jun 2024 15:52 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier BV |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.revpalbo.2023.105039 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:212974 |
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