Dr Jamie Wood1,2, Chengran Zhou3,4, Theresa Cole5, Morgan Coleman5, Dean Anderson5, Phil Lyver5, Shangjin Tan3,6, Xueyan Xiang3,4, Xinrui Long3,7, Senyu Lou3,6, Miao Lou8, John Southon9, Qiye Li3,4, Guojie Zhang10,11
1Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, The University Of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, 2Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, 3BGI Research, Wuhan, China, 4State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Genomics, BGI Research, Shenzhen, China, 5Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand, 6College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 7Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology, Institute of Marine Sciences, Shantou University, Shantou, China, 8College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, 9Department of Earth System Science, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, USA, 10Center for Evolutionary & Organismal Biology and Women’s Hospital at Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and Liangzhu Laboratory, Zhejiang University Medical Center, Hangzhou, China, 11Liangzhu Laboratory, Zhejiang University Medical Center, Hangzhou, China
Biography:
Dr Jamie Wood is group leader in environmental genomics at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, University of Adelaide. His group’s research involves using environmental DNA (eDNA) to explore ecological change over timescales ranging from months to millennia. Through accessing ancient eDNA preserved in sediments and soils, their research provides a unique long-term perspective on biodiversity change across the Southern Hemisphere.
Abstract:
Northern hemisphere permafrost soils and sediments have long been a focus of ancient DNA research, yet analogous substrates at high southern latitudes have received little attention. Nevertheless, terrestrial sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) holds significant promise as a tool for understanding the long-term dynamics of Antarctic ecosystems and their responses to past climate and environmental change. To demonstrate this, we generated 156 sedaDNA metagenomes from fourteen stratigraphically sampled Adélie penguin colonies dating back to ~6000 years along the Ross Sea, Antarctica. We identified sedaDNA from a wide range of marine and terrestrial eukaryotes, including vertebrates. SedaDNA from Adélie penguin prey, including krill and fish, revealed broad patterns of diet variability over space and time. We developed new approaches for reconstructing the relative proportions of major Adélie penguin mitochondrial lineages at each locality and estimating population change through time based on mitochondrial nucleotide diversity recovered from sedaDNA. Elevated nucleotide diversity in the uppermost sediment layers of several active colonies were consistent with Adélie penguin population growth within the last 1000 years. SedaDNA also revealed an unexpected prior occupation of the current Adélie penguin colony site at Cape Hallett by southern elephant seal, demonstrating the potential of terrestrial sedaDNA for detecting past faunal turnover events in Antarctica that were driven by past climate or sea ice conditions. Low rates of damaged DNA molecules (~4% with terminal cytosine deamination at 6000 years) indicate exceptional sedaDNA preservation within the region and highlight the significant potential for recovering much older sedaDNA records from Antarctic terrestrial sediments.