Revisiting the palaeoenvironmental and climatic history of the Cherangani Hills using fungal spores

Fungi are highly sensitive to environmental and climatic changes. Palaeoecological reconstructions utilising tropical African fungal spores, however, are rare and patchy. Here, we show that fossil fungal spores preserved in core KAP-01 from the Cherangani Hills in Kenya tracks critical environmental changes in the African tropics since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), largely synchronous with observations in the pollen record from the same site. Consistent with the pollen record, the presence of fungal taxa in the record, albeit meagre, during the LGM point to an intermittent wetter Cherangani that allowed for the presence of the observed taxa and the prevalence of cool, dry conditions during the last deglaciation. The elevated fungal spore activity during the Late Holocene is evidence for warm, moist environmental conditions and broadly consistent with the pollen record. These different fungal spore taxa, which can be employed to track distinct environmental conditions and processes, provide a dimension that can be overlooked if the reconstruction of the palaeoenvironment were to rely solely on pollen. Thus the fungal spore record enables us to affirm the interpretation of the prevalence of warm, moist conditions evident from such as the Holocene pollen record.