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.

中文翻译：

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使用真菌孢子重温Cherangani丘陵的古环境和气候历史

真菌对环境和气候变化高度敏感。然而，利用热带非洲真菌孢子进行的古生态重建很少见且斑驳。在这里，我们显示了从肯尼亚的Cherangani丘陵保存在核心KAP-01中的化石真菌孢子追踪了自上次冰河期（LGM）以来非洲热带地区的关键环境变化，这与同一地点花粉记录的观察结果基本同步。与花粉记录一致，在记录的LGM期间，虽然有细微的变化，但记录中有真菌类群的存在，这表明间歇性的湿切朗加尼语允许存在观察到的类群，并且在最后一次冰消期间普遍存在凉爽，干燥的条件。全新世晚期真菌孢子活性的升高证明是温暖的，潮湿的环境条件与花粉记录大致一致。这些不同的真菌孢子类群可用于跟踪不同的环境条件和过程，如果古环境的重建仅依靠花粉，则可以忽略不计。因此，真菌孢子记录使我们能够确定对全新世花粉记录等明显的温暖潮湿条件的解释。