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  • Writer's pictureJanet Franklin

New Paper! Paleodistribution modeling of photosynthetic pathways

"The importance of C3 and C4 grasses and CAM shrubs in the Greater Cape Floristic Region under contemporary and Last Glacial Maximum climates" published in Quaternary Science Reviews.


Instead of modeling species we modelled the relative abundance of photosynthetic pathways based on vegetation surveys. Southern Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) – a hotspot of biological diversity and palaeoanthropological evidence for modern human evolution – is a climatically complex region where broad climatic gradients influence the relative importance of plant photosynthetic types in local vegetation. Our distribution maps therefore provide a much more comprehensive and detailed depiction of δ13C isoscapes for the region – under both an interglacial (Holocene, modern) and glacial (LGM) climate – against which palaeo-records can be assessed.

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