Due to the complex relationship between pollen and vegetation, it is not yet clear how pollen diagrams may be interpreted with respect to changes in floristic diversity and only a few studies have hitherto investigated this problem. We compare pollen assemblages from moss samples in two southeastern European forests with the surrounding vegetation to investigate (a) their compositional similarity, (b) the association between their diversity characteristics in both terms of richness and evenness, and (c) the correspondence of the main ecological gradients that can be revealed by them. Two biogeographical regions with different vegetation characteristics, the Pieria mountains (north central Greece) and the slopes of Ciomadul volcano (eastern Romania), were chosen as divergent examples of floristic regions, vegetation structure and landscape openness. Pollen assemblages are efficient in capturing the presence or absence, rather than the abundance in distribution of plants in the surrounding area and this bias increases along with landscape openness and vegetation diversity, which is higher in the Pieria mountains. Pollen assemblages and vegetation correlate better in terms of richness, that is, low order diversity indices. Relatively high correlation, in terms of evenness, could be potentially found in homogenous and species poor ecosystems as for Ciomadul. Composition and diversity of woody, rather than herb, vegetation is better reflected in pollen assemblages of both areas, especially for Pieria where a direct comparison of the two components was feasible, although this depends on the species-specific pollen production and dispersal, the openness of landscape and the overall diversity of vegetation. Gradients revealed by pollen assemblages are highly and significantly correlated with those existing in vegetation. Pollen assemblages may represent the vegetation well in terms of composition, diversity (mainly richness) and ecological gradients, but this potential depends on land use, vegetation structure, biogeographical factors and plant life forms.

由于花粉与植被之间的复杂关系，目前尚不清楚如何根据植物区系的变化来解释花粉图，迄今为止只有很少的研究对此问题进行了研究。我们将欧洲东南部两个森​​林中苔藓样本的花粉组合与周围的植被进行比较，以调查（a）它们的组成相似性，（b）在丰富度和均匀性方面它们的多样性特征之间的关联，以及（c）它们可以揭示的主要生态梯度。选择了两个具有不同植被特征的生物地理区域，即皮埃里亚山脉（希腊中北部）和奇奥马杜尔火山斜坡（罗马尼亚东部）作为植物区，植被结构和景观开放度的不同实例。花粉组合可以有效地捕获周围环境中植物的存在与否，而不是分布丰富，并且这种偏差随着景观的开放性和植被多样性的增加而增加，在皮埃里亚山区更高。花粉组合和植被之间的相关性就丰富程度而言，即低阶多样性指数更好。就均一性而言，与齐奥马杜尔一样，在同质和物种贫乏的生态系统中可能会发现相对较高的相关性。在这两个地区的花粉组合中，木质植被（而非草本植物）的组成和多样性得到了更好的体现，特别是对于皮埃里亚（Pieria），可以直接比较这两种成分，尽管这取决于特定物种的花粉生产和传播，景观的开放性和植被的整体多样性。花粉组合所揭示的梯度与植被中存在的梯度高度且显着相关。花粉组合可以从组成，多样性（主要是丰富度）和生态梯度方面很好地代表植被，但这种潜力取决于土地利用，植被结构，生物地理因素和植物生命形式。