Fig. 3: Distribution pattern of vascular plants.

a Heatmap showing the frequency of detection for selected plant species, ordered by their traits. Species names and trait information are listed in Supplementary Data 3. b The relationship between the number of sites a plant species or genus was detected in the sediment, elevation of its natural occurrence and abundance in the catchment area. Occurrence data is from InfoFlora⁷⁶, therefore restricted to the Swiss part of the catchment area: elevation is the medium elevation of each 5 × 5 km sampling grid, number of observations (a proxy for abundance) is the summed count within each sampling grid. Plant species/genera are not labelled on the chart except for whether they are aquatic plants. c Example distributions that show the occurrence and abundance of three selected plant species in comparison to the abundance of their sedimentary DNA. Size of red violet circles indicates the number of observations within in a 5 × 5 km sampling grid (a proxy for abundance). Size of indigo squares indicates the log count of ASVs at each site in the lake. The approximate range of the Swiss catchment, where occurrence data are available in InfoFlora⁷⁶, is marked with dashed lines. Terrain map is retrieved from Stamen Maps⁸⁶ using the R package ggmap⁸⁷.