Understanding the significance of pollen diversity is key to reconstructing plant diversity over long timescales. Here we present quantitative pollen-plant diversity comparisons for a mountainous area of the Western Mediterranean region. Samples were collected between 430–1,865 m elevation and pollen-plant diversity assessed through richness and turnover (beta-diversity) metrics. We found statistically significant relationships between pollen diversity metrics and the diversity of pollen-equivalent plant taxa in the surrounding vegetation. The strongest richness relationships emerged from the exclusion of trees and with standardisation of the sample size (rarefaction) applied to both plant and pollen datasets. Three different metrics for turnover produced similar results, but emphasise different components of beta diversity (replacement vs richness differences). These results pave the way for reconstructing biodiversity trends from pollen sequences, with a number of caveats. Fossil pollen is a potentially rich source of information on past biodiversity in the Mediterranean region.

了解花粉多样性的重要性是长期重建植物多样性的关键。在这里，我们介绍了西地中海地区山区的定量花粉植物多样性比较。在海拔430-1,865 m之间收集了样本，并通过丰富度和周转率（β多样性）评估了花粉植物的多样性。我们发现花粉多样性指标与周围植被中花粉当量植物分类群的多样性之间具有统计学意义的关系。最强的丰富度关系是由于树木被排除在外，以及对植物和花粉数据集均采用的样本大小（反射）标准化。三种不同的营业额指标产生了相似的结果，但要强调Beta多样性的不同组成部分（取代度与丰富度差异）。这些结果为从花粉序列重建生物多样性趋势铺平了道路，但有许多警告。化石花粉可能是地中海地区过去生物多样性的丰富信息来源。