Environmental controls on peatland testate amoebae (Protozoa: Rhizopoda) in the North of Ireland: Implications for Holocene palaeoclimate studies

The environmental controls on modern peatland testate amoebae (Protozoa: Rhizopoda) in the North of Ireland were investigated to assess the potential for Holocene palaeoclimate research within this region. Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) revealed that hydrological factors (water table depth and moisture content) are the most important abiotic controls on organism distribution. A series of partial CCAs showed that water table depth explains 15.8% and moisture content explains 5.5% of the total variance. Monte-Carlo permutation tests showed that the results are highly significant ( p