March 2025 Newsletter
Dear sed-DNA enthusiasts,
A new year has started, and the newsletter will again be sent out on a monthly basis after this small break in activity. Congrats to the many people whose papers have been published in the last few months, there are also preprints, job opportunities, and conference sessions listed below that could match your research interests. From now on you can look forward to the newsletter at the beginning of each month.
If you would like to advertise something to the society, you are welcome to get in touch with me (Maïlys Picard, mailys.picard@umu.se) or share your news directly with all of our members using the mailing list sedadna-society@googlegroups.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
We would like to remind everyone that seminars are held once a month specifically for early career researchers (ERCs) / students, on the first Thursday of the month, to be able to talk about your research and exchange with fellow ERCs also working on sedaDNA. Seminars occur in two timezones, and are organised by Ines Barrenechea (Europe-Africa time zone) and Jordan Von Eggers (Americas time zone). Any early career member is more than welcome to join - you can sign up by emailing Ines (ines.a.angeles@uit.no) or Jordan (jvonegge@uwyo.edu).
If you would like meet fellow sedaDNA enthusiasts in person, please remember to register for our second sedaDNA meeting in Tromsø (Norway) this coming June. Early bird registration is until the 14th of March, and registration closes the 1st of April.
Wishing you a great month of March,
The organising board
New papers
Giulia Zampirolo et al., (2024) published "Tracing early pastoralism in Central Europe using sedimentary ancient DNA" in Current Biology.
Alexander Williams et al., (2024) published "Ancient environmental microbiomes and the cryosphere" in Trends in Microbiology.
Per Möller et al., (2024) published "The Mesolithic Hunter–Gatherer Camp Site at Sammakko in Norrbotten, Northernmost Sweden—Archeological Finds and Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction" in Geoarchaeology.
Qi Lin et al., (2024) published "Reconstructing Anthropocene dynamics of subtropical vegetation and plant diversity by combining sedimentary ancient DNA and pollen: A high-resolution comparative analysis from China’s Yangtze floodplain" in Fundamental Research.
Marianne Vogel et al., (2024) published "Multi-proxy analysis of early Holocene vegetation dynamics on the islands of proglacial Lake Ojibway (northeastern America)" in the Journal of Quarternary Science.
Tony Brown et al., (2025) published "The sedaDNA revolution and archaeology: Progress, challenges, and a research agenda" in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Scarlett Zetter et al., (2025) published "SedaDNA shows that transhumance of domestic herbivores has enhanced plant diversity over the Holocene in the Eastern European Alps" in The Holocene.
Tetsuya Shinozaki et al., (2025) published "Identification of deposits from modern and ancient large tsunamis by means of environmental DNA" in Scientific Reports.
Pere Gelabert et al., (2025) published "A sedimentary ancient DNA perspective on human and carnivore persistence through the Late Pleistocene in El Mirón Cave, Spain" in Nature Communications.
Ying Liu et al., (2025) published "Holocene rangeland characteristics on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau in relation to climate and pastoralism from sedimentary ancient DNA" in Quaternary Science Reviews.
Jérémy Courtin et al., (2025) published "Potential plant extinctions with the loss of the Pleistocene mammoth steppe" in Nature Communications.
Sabine Fiedler et al., (2025) published "Fecal lipid markers in tandem with ancient sedimentary DNA as a tool for tracing past livestock farming from soils and sediments" in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.
Wei Shen et al., (2025) published "Post-glacial vegetation trajectories on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau reflect millennial-scale migration lags in complex mountain terrain based on sedimentary ancient DNA and dynamic dispersal modeling" in Ecology and Evolution.
Kai Wu et al., (2025) published "Preservation of lake sedimentary plant DNA in the Eastern China and its relationship to modern land use types" in Quaternary Sciences.
Ulrike Herzschuh et al., (2025) published "Dynamic land-plant carbon sources in marine sediments inferred from ancient DNA" in Communications Earth & Environment.
Stefano Meucci et al., (2025) published "Biological processes underlying genetic adaptation of larches to cold and dry winter conditions in Eastern Siberia" in Ecology and Evolution.
Uğur Çabuk et al., (2025) published "Functional annotation of eukaryotic genes from sedimentary ancient DNA" in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Irene Julián-Posada et al., (2025) published "Neolithic pastoralism and plant community interactions at high altitudes of the Pyrenees, southern Europe" in Communications Earth & Environment.
Ophélie David et al., (2024) published "From a coastal plain to an anthropized fluvial valley (NW Brittany, France): 7.3 kyr of paleoenvironmental evolution from sedimentological, palynological and paleogenomic perspectives" in Quaternary Science Reviews.
Ophélie David et al., (2025) published a data article: "New coastal records in northern Brittany (Plouescat, NW France): Sedimentological, palynological and paleogenomic data over the last 7.3 ka BP" in Data in Brief.
Luke Holman et al., (2025) published "Navigating past oceans: comparing metabarcoding and metagenomics of marine ancient sediment environmental DNA" in Molecular Ecology Resources.
Preprints
Lennart Schreiber et al., (2024) made the preprint "Holocene shifts in marine mammal distributions around Northern Greenland revealed by sedimentary ancient DNA" available on ResearchSquare.
Ewa Demianiuk et al., (2024) made the preprint "Sedimentary ancient DNA insights into foraminiferal diversity near the grounding line in the western Ross Sea, Antarctica" available at EGUsphere.
Martha Sander et al., (2024) made the preprint "Sedimentary metagenomics reveal cold-adapted chickens' dominance during the Last Glacial and Holocene avian diversification" available on Authorea.
Siobhan Evans et al., (2024) made the preprint "Sedimentary ancient DNA from caves: challenges and opportunities" available on Authorea.
Lutz Schirrmeister et al., (2024) made the preprint "Newly dated permafrost deposits and their paleo-ecological inventory reveal a much warmer-than-today Eemian in Arctic Siberia" available at Copernicus Publications.
New Positions
PhD position on the transport and deposition of DNA and its representation in the fluvial sedimentary record with Annegret Larsen and Benjamin Vernot, based at Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands. The application deadline is the 10th of March 2025.
A Postdoc position and a PhD position using ancient sedimentary DNA to study ancient ports with Tony Brown, Doreen Yu-Tuan Huang, and Paul Hughes at the University of Southampton, UK. The application deadline is the 6th of March 2025 for the Postdoc position and 18th of March for the PhD position.
A PhD position and a Postdoc position to address the impact of past climate and human disturbance on mountain vegetation at different scales and using variou proxies (including sedaDNA) with Maria Leunda at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The application deadline is the 31st of March 2025.
Conference announcements
The IAL-IPA joint meeting 2025 will be in Aix les Bains, France from October 6-10, 2025. The conference has three sessions that could be of interest:
- "II-1-New perspectives and findings in paleolimnology using environmental ancient DNA" organised by Kathleen R. Stoof-Leichsenring, Laura S. Epp, Charline Giguet-Covex, Maïlys Picard, Stanislav Jelavić, Antony G. Brown.
- "III-7-The coevolution of environments and biodiversity" organised by Leighton King, Pavani Misra, Irene Gregory-Eaves.
- "IV-1-Biogeochemical cycles in the subsurface: molecular and mineral proxies for integrated lacustrine studies" organised by Lotta Purkamo, Maïlys Picard, Aurèle Vuillemin, and Camille Thomas.
The International Joint Conference on “BioGeoEvolution: Bridging Past and Future Discoveries, BiGEvo 2025” aims to foster interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations that deepen our understanding of the interplay between geological processes and the evolution of life on Earth. It will emphasize ancient microbial ecosystems as models for early Earth conditions and explore their modern applications in biotechnology and ecology. The conference will be held in Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila, Mexico, 28-30 May 2025, with pre and post-conference events occurring 26-27 May and 31 May - June 1. Abstract submission closes the 1st of April 2025.
Another reminder about the second sedaDNA meeting in Tromsø (Norway) from the 23rd to 26th of June 2025. If you would like meet fellow sedaDNA enthusiasts in person, please remember to register before the 1st of April.
Contact Maïlys Picard at mailys.picard@umu.se if you want to announce something to the society, or if you have a recent paper that you would like to advertise in the newsletter.