Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Quaternary Science Reviews 104 (2014): 53-62, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.07.009.
Description:
Fossil long-chain alkenones have been used for several decades to reconstruct past ocean surface water temperatures and gained recent interest as a paleotemperature proxy for continental lake settings. However, factors besides temperature can affect alkenone distributions in haptophyte algae, and alkenone compositions can differ between haptophyte species. Alkenone-biosynthesizing haptophyte algae are genetically much more diverse in lakes than in the marine realm, and species-level variations in alkenone compositions could have implications for alkenone paleothermometry. Here, we performed a paired analysis of alkenone distributions and haptophyte species compositions using ancient DNA in up to 270 ka-old sediments of Lake Van in Turkey to reveal a possible species-effect on fossil alkenone distributions and paleotemperature estimates. The same predominant haptophyte in Lake Van today prevailed also since the last ∼100 ka. However, a calibration of alkenone paleotemperature especially in the oldest analyzed intervals is complicated due to a more complex haptophyte species composition predominated by a haptophyte (LVHap_6), which is phylogenetically different from sequences recovered from currently existing lakes including Lake Van and from haptophyte species existing in culture. The predominance of LVHap_6 coincided with the presence of alkenone MeC38:3 and relatively high MeC37:3/4 (2.4) and MeC38:4/5 ratios (3.0). Uk37 index values in the sediment core over the last 270 ka reflect relative changes in past temperature and are additionally linked to haptophyte species composition. A sustained period of high salinity, as indicated by pore-water salinity measurements, could potentially have triggered the succession of haptophytes as sources of alkenones in Lake Van.
Description:
The PALEOVAN drilling campaign was financially supported by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF grants 200020_143340, 20FI21_124972 and 200021_124981) and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tübitak).
Keywords:
Alkenone paleothermometry
;
Haptophyte species
;
Paleoproxy
;
Biomarker
;
Paleolimnology
;
Lake Van
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
Format:
application/msword
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