No-analog (ecology)

[2][3] Alternative naming conventions to describe no-analog communities and climates may include novel, emerging, mosaic, disharmonious and intermingled.

[3][4][5][6] Modern climates, communities and ecosystems are often studied in an attempt to understand no-analogs that have happened in the past and those that may occur in the future.

[3] Formation of no-analog communities can be due to multiple factors, including climate conditions, environmental changes, human action, disease or species interactions.

[3][13] Changes in plant community compositions may also lead to no-analog conditions with addition of biotic pressures such as competition and disease, or enhanced fire regimes.

The North American pollen record provides examples of detailed no-analog plant assemblages from the late quaternary.

Pollen assemblages that contain no modern analog are present from many late glacial and early Holocene records, and extend from 14,000 to 12,000 years ago.

[13] This is evident through extensive records of high abundances of broadleaved trees Ulmus, Ostrya, Fraxinus and Quercus mixed with boreal conifers such as Picea and Larix during the late Holocene.

[14] This extinction has led to the creation of a no-analog for modern ecosystems, which are lacking high diversity or abundance of large herbivores.

The shifts in these groups has been hypothesized to have direct relationship to one another, with the possibility of a release from herbivory pressures causing the bloom in novel plant assemblages during the late quaternary.