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Seeds of Pistia stratiotes L. (water lettuce) in the paleo-sediments of Lake Annie, Florida

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Abstract

Pistia stratiotes L. (water lettuce) is a floating tropical macrophyte long identified and managed as a non-native species within the State of Florida and other areas of the southern United States. Macrofossil seeds from Lake Annie, Florida, however, indicate abundant presence of P. stratiotes intermixed with other locally native macrophytes from ~13,500 to ~12,000 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP). This was soon after the lake depression first began filling with water as the piezometric groundwater surface of the Florida peninsula rose in response to rising seas during the transition (~18,000 to ~11,000 cal yr BP) from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the Holocene interglacial. These macrofossil records join several other lines of evidence supporting native status of P. stratiotes in the Florida peninsula. While recent cryptic invasion of non-native Pistia genotypes into some of Florida’s freshwater ecosystems also appears likely, confirmed paleo-presence and contemporary persistence of native P. stratiotes subpopulations may have especially important management and conservation implications for Florida’s spring-fed streams. Palaeobotanical evidence of this type may be useful in further resolving the global biogeography of P. stratiotes and other cryptic aquatic plant species.

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Fig. 1
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Data availability

All data for age dating of sediment stratigraphy and evidence supporting P. stratiotes presence in paleo-sediments are included within this paper.

Change history

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the pioneering work of William A. Watts (1930–2010) on the paleoecology of southeastern North America, and especially Florida. Watts was aware that the occurrence of P. stratiotes seeds in late-glacial sediments at Lake Annie had important implications for conservation biology in Florida, and this paper, based on data that he helped collect and develop, serves partially as a posthumous tribute to him. We acknowledge Pietra Mueller, an assistant in Grimm’s laboratory at the Illinois State Museum, Research and Collections Center in Springfield, IL, for her work removing and counting macrofossils from the sediments of Lake Annie. We acknowledge Colin Reid, Centre for Microscopy and Analysis, Trinity College of Dublin, Ireland, for locating and kindly providing the SEM images in Fig. 5 from the research archives of W.A. Watts. We acknowledge Jan Vandermark, undergraduate student at Stetson University, for providing the photograph of the P. stratiotes plant with attached seeds shown in Fig. 1b. We also thank Archbold Biological Station for providing Evans with access to Lake Annie in March 2023 and enabling the contacts that allowed for this paper to finally be developed in full. Lastly, we thank two anonymous reviewers and the handling editor for a series of thoughtful comments and suggestions that helped to greatly improve the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science and Studies, Stetson University, 421 N. Woodland Boulevard, DeLand, FL, 32723, USA

    Jason M. Evans & Benjamin R. Tanner

  2. Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Orono, ME, 04469, USA

    George L. Jacobson

  3. University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Eric C. Grimm

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Contributions

Evans, Jacobson, and Tanner wrote the main manuscript text. Jacobson and Grimm collected the original core from the field, in collaboration with W.A. Watts. Evans prepared Fig. 2. Grimm performed pollen counts and prepared a draft of Fig. 4. Tanner completed the CALIB 8.2 IntCal20 calibration used in Table 1, constructed Fig. 3, and added the calibrated ages to Fig. 4. As a posthumous author, Grimm did not review the manuscript before submission. All living authors reviewed the manuscript. The living authors—Evans, Jacobson, and Tanner—assume sole responsibility for the presentation, interpretation, and discussion of data and analyses within the manuscript. The living authors also assume sole responsibility for any errors or oversights.

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Correspondence to Jason M. Evans.

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Eric C. Grimm: Posthumous, 1951–2020.

The original online version of this article was revised: In the last sentence in the second paragraph under the section “Results” section in the article, the value ~1500 cal yr BP should have read ~11,500 cal yr BP.

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Evans, J.M., Jacobson, G.L., Tanner, B.R. et al. Seeds of Pistia stratiotes L. (water lettuce) in the paleo-sediments of Lake Annie, Florida. J Paleolimnol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-024-00311-5

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