ABSTRACT
Contemporary pollen rain studies are conducted to determine pollen-vegetation relationships and develop modern analogues to facilitate palaeoreconstruction from fossil pollen assemblages. In this study, a two year modern pollen sampling campaign was conducted for eleven vegetation communities across a range of altitudes in the Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa. The aim was to compare pollen assemblage composition, diversity, and influx between vegetation communities, and investigate representivity of taxa. Despite a high degree of within and between community homogeneity, characteristic pollen taxa are suggested as indicative of particular communities. We highlight over- and under-representation of certain taxa within the vegetation communities and list ‘palynologically silent’ taxa - those that appear in the vegetation but are absent from the modern pollen spectra. From the resultant modern pollen assemblages, it is not possible to distinguish the grassland types, although the possibility does exist for the forest, shrubland and wetland communities. Arboreal Celtis and Podocarpus pollen types are diagnostic for the Afrotemperate forest community, and Leucosidea sericea for the shrubland community which it dominates. We suggest that modern pollen analogues are feasible for the non-grassland Drakensberg communities and echo the sentiments of others that modern pollen rain-vegetation dynamics are a prerequisite to accurately constrain interpretation of fossil pollen spectra.
