Proxy methods useful species

This Waterloo was unfortunate for the author considers the boron method to be basically sound and potentially extremely powerful. The answer to the benthic enigma may lie in species-to-species differences in the boron isotope vital effect for benthic foraminifera. The measurement method use by Sanyal et al. (1996) required a large number of benthic shells in order to get enough boron to analyze. This created a problem because, as benthics are rare among foraminifera shells, mixed benthics rather than a single species were analyzed. If the boron isotope pH proxy is to... 

However, differences between paired foraminiferal shell chemistry records demonstrate that our understanding of these proxies remains incomplete (e.g. Boyle 1992 Rosenthal et al. 1995 Boyle Rosenthal 1996). Field calibration studies have revealed potential artifacts that can complicate proxy interpretations (McCorkle et al. 1990 Mackensen et al. 1993 McCorkle et al. 1995), and staining studies have documented the microhabitats (i.e. epibenthic (at the sediment-water interface) and endobenthic (within the sediments)) occupied by different benthic foraminiferal species (Corliss 1985 Mackensen Douglas 1989 Corliss Emerson 1990). Staining methods have been used both to focus palaeochemical calibration efforts on live (or recently live) specimens, and to use species microhabitat preferences... 

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