Proceedings of the 7th international palynological congress [antikvár]

Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 64 (1990): 1-4 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., AmsterdamPrefaceThe seventh International Palynological Congress was held in Brisbane from 29th August to 3rd September, 1988. It was attended by some 250 delegates, and a total of 335 papers was presented, in both oral and poster formats. These two volumes, comprising 81 articles, represent roughly a quarter of the presented papers. The presentations were divided into 32 symposia, most of which are represented in these volumes, some by a substantial number of papers, others by only one or two.Both the Congress and the papers compiled here show palynology to be a discipline striking in its breadth, characterised by a diversity of content, methodology and application. The breadth spans important applications in medicine, in evolutionary biology and taxonomy, in ecology, in stratigraphy and sedimentology, in oil exploration and recovery, in palaeoclimatology and even in the highly practical forensic science. Within the fields themselves there is clearly an increasing depth of understanding as well as breadth of compass.For example, the medical applications, in aerobiology and the biochemistry of allergens, show a wide geographic range, with papers reviewing aspects of pollinosis in Europe, with focal points in France and Italy, and in India, Japan and Australia. These geographically-based reviews are accompanied by more analytical studies which explore the links between allergic symptoms, pollen production and meteorological factors.Symposia dedicated to the impacts of pollen morphology on plant systematics demonstrate the difficulty of interpreting the significance of pollen characters without a comprehensive survey of the groups in question. For example, in angiosperms, simple tricolpate pollen is usually considered less derived than tricolporate; studies presented here within the Papilionoideae suggest that, in this case at least, the tricolpate form may be a secondary specialisation. Similarly, these studies arouse speculation about the evolutionary status of the exine wall layers. The fossil record suggests that columel-late structure is most likely to be the primitive form; however, in some living angiosperm families, Annonaceae for example, described here, it is the granular interstitium which is thought to be basic. The initiation and formation of granular exine within a gymnosperm, Cunninghamia, is also described in the symposium on ontogeny.Elaboration of the Early Cretaceous fossil record of the angiosperms shows the perhaps surprising diversity of pollen wall structures at this early stage in evolution of the group. It highlights too the influence of environmental factors on evolutionary process.Quaternary palynology is strongly represented in the papers contained here. The broad outlines of its history and the shifts in its applications are described in an invited review. From its European origins, Quaternary palynology has both expanded geographically and deepened in perception. The expansion is evident in the present volume, which contains contributions from a spread of localities around the globe-from North and South America, Australia, India and the Middle East. There is expansion too in the environments which are the subject of investigation; the inclusion here of several papers on the palynology of arid regions is a far cry from the traditional base of the discipline in the temperate forests of Europe. The suggestion has been made that Quaternary palynology may become less concerned with climatic reconstructions in the future. However, the enhanced value that palynology can offer to climatic analysis undertaken by means such as isotopic palaeotem-peratures is clearly evident in the demonstrated relationship between vegetation phases in Tierra del Fuego and fluctuations in temperatures determined from Antarctic ice cores.If, as has been suggested, the way ahead for Quaternary palynology lies with fields such as vegetation dynamics, there is much encouragement to be found here in papers which relate pollen production, transport and accumulation to the