April 2024 Newsletter
Dear sed-DNA enthusiasts,
It is again time for the next edition of the newsletter. There is little to announce from our side, and I therefore keep it short.
As usual, papers published and pre-prints in the previous month are listed below.
New papers
Jordan Von Eggers et al., (2024) published "Environmental filtering governs consistent vertical zonation in sedimentary microbial communities across disconnected mountain lakes " in Environmental Microbiology.
Karina K. Sand et al., (2024) published "Importance of eDNA taphonomy and sediment provenance for robust ecological inference: Insights from interfacial geochemistry " in Environmental DNA.
Preprints
Ulrike Herzschuh(2024) made the preprint "Dynamic land-plant carbon sources in marine sediments inferred from ancient DNA" available at bioRxiv
New positions
Post-doc Position
La Sapienza University in Rome is offering a 12-month postdoctoral researcher position (with possible extension until December 2025) on the VOLARE project. VOLARE aims to utilize ancient environmental DNA (eDNA) to assess Volcanic Lakes' Reference condition, biodiversity, and long-term ecological response to climate variability and anthropic pressure.
The EU Water Framework Directive mandates member states to maintain or restore water bodies' ecological quality similar to uncontaminated ones. However, Italian volcanic lakes face challenges due to the absence of pristine environments, and current methods to define lake ecological quality are costly and labour-intensive. Our project aims to assess the potential of eDNA in surface sediment layers to compile a list of present organisms and develop numerical methods as an ecological quality indicator and to utilize eDNA from 1-meter long sediment cores to objectively estimate changes in biological communities over recent centuries, establishing a reference condition.
The candidate will assess metabarcoding and shotgun sequencing with probe hybridization capture techniques on short sediment cores (100 cm) to determine biological community composition and biodiversity, including zooplankton, phytoplankton, phytobenthos, macrophytes, zoobenthos, and fish fauna. eDNA analysis will yield numerical methods and organism lists, indicating volcanic lake ecological quality. Additionally, molecular data will be compared with algal community composition inferred from morphological and biochemical analyses.
Laboratory experience is required, preferably with ancient DNA and bioinformatics tools for data analysis.
Deadline for application: April 13, 2024. For more information about the call, please refer to the provided link (brief summary in English available at the end). If you're interested and require assistance with the application process, feel free to contact the Principal Investigator at laura.parducci@uniroma1.it
Contact me at kevin_nota@eva.mpg.de or you want to announce something to the society, or if you have a recent paper that you would like to advertise in the newsletter.