AimOur aim was to discriminate different species ofPinusvia pollen analysisin order to assess the responses of particular pine species to orbital and millen-nial-scale climate changes, particularly during the last glacial period.LocationModern pollen grains were collected from current pine populationsalong transects from the Pyrenees to southern Iberia and the Balearic Islands.Fossil pine pollen was recovered from the south-western Iberian margin coreMD95-2042.MethodsWe measured a set of morphological traits of modern pollen fromthe Iberian pine speciesPinus nigra,P. sylvestris,P. halepensis,P. pineaandP. pinasterand of fossil pine pollen from selected samples of the last glacialperiod and the early to mid-Holocene. Classification and regression tree(CART) analysis was used to establish a model from the modern dataset thatdiscriminates pollen from the different pine species and allows identification offossil pine pollen at the species level.ResultsThe CART model was effective in separating pollen ofP. nigraandP. sylvestrisfrom that of the Mediterranean pine group (P. halepensis,P. pineaandP. pinaster). The pollen ofPinus nigradiverged from that ofP. sylvestrisby having a more flattened corpus. Predictions using this model suggested thatfossil pine pollen is mainly fromP. nigrain all the samples analysed.Pinus syl-vestriswas more abundant in samples from Greenland stadials than Heinrichstadials, whereas Mediterranean pines increased in samples from Greenland in-terstadials and during the early to mid-Holocene.Main conclusionsMorphological parameters can be successfully used toincrease the taxonomic resolution of fossil pine pollen at the species level forthe highland pines (P. nigraandP. sylvestris) and at the group of species levelfor the Mediterranean pines. Our study indicates thatP. nigrawas the domi-nant component of the last glacial south-western/central Iberian pinewoods,although the species composition of these woodlands varied in response toabrupt climate changes.< Leer menos