A comprehensive procedure for pollen extraction from bat guano deposits in organic and detrital matrices

Although bat guano deposits have been proven to be excellent environmental archives for paleoecological and paleoclimate studies, the development of a standardized method specially catering to pollen extraction has received no attention so far. In general, the processing procedure is quite similar among published studies, but adjustments must be made regarding the proportion of organic and particulate matter in the guano deposit. In this study, we present step-by-step optimized sample processing methods for pollen analysis. These procedures first apply a chemical treatment for the removal of siliceous and organic material, followed by a sieving step to remove the remaining inorganic matter from those samples with high detrital content. Overall, our methods can efficiently remove particulate matter and improve the quality of the final residue, resulting in cleaner slides and better visualization of pollen and spores. • Remove humic acid and organic material with Potassium hydroxide. • Remove inorganic matter with hydrofluoric acid and sieving. • Concentrate and store the pollen residues in glycerin.