Dr Paul Czechowski1, Dr Krzysztof Zawierucha2, Dr Nataliia Iakovenko5, Dr Mark Stevens3,4
1Helmholtz Institute for Metabolic, Obesity and Vascular Research (HI-MAG) of the Helmholtz Zentrum München at the University of Leipzig and University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, 2Department of Animal Taxonomy and Ecology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland, 3School of Biological Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, 4Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future, South Australian Museum, Adelaide, Australia, 5Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 00 , Kamýcká 129, Czech Republic
Biography:
Paul knows biology across the entire tree of live and loves Antarctica. For more than ten years years he has examined unicellular and multicellular species through trace DNA analysis of very old bones, tissue, soils, and ocean water, while working at well-known places such as Otago University (Dunedin, NZ), Cornell University (Ithaca, USA), Adelaide University (Adelaide, AU), British Antarctic Survey (Cambridge, UK), and the Max-Plank-Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany).
Abstract:
Even though only 0.3% of Antarctica are ice-free, those ice-free areas harbor diverse microscopic animals such as tardigrades, nematodes, and rotifers. The habitats of these cryptic invertebrates change due natural alterations and face threats from human activity, climate change, and pollution. Biodiversity surveys are essential for managing their protection and such surveys have been proven well possible in Antarctica using environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis. Early eDNA research had greatly benefited from high-throughput sequencing using the now obsolete 454 pyrosequencing technique, which at the time offered superior read length to the Illumina platform. In a 2011-12 expedition to the very remote Prince Charles Mountains we had collected soil samples, from which we amplified and described 18S Ribosomal 1 RNA gene sequences. Recently we reanalysed concomitantly generated 454-derived Cytochrome Oxidase Subunit 1 amplicons from those soils, making use of now updated reference data. From our "historic" 454 data we now can provide additional records for some Antarctic taxa, including tardigrades Acutuncus antarcticus and Macrobiotus hufelandi group, the nematodes Plectus frigophilus and Plectus murrayi, and rotifers of the Adineta vaga species complex. We show that reanalysing past eDNA projects can yield novel information as reference data collections grow, at the same highlighting the need to keep building such data collections.