Summary
Hello sedaDNA enthusiasts,
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2026! We hope that you have had a nice holiday break and are feeling rested and ready to take on the new year. Over December, six papers were published. There is one postdoc job opening and abstract submissions are open for EGU 2026 and Inqua 2027.
Wishing you a great month of January,
The organising board
New papers
Justine Nakintu et al., (2026) published "Uncovering the tropical past: emerging evidence from ancient environmental DNA" in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
Guanglin He et al., (2026) published "Ancient genomes give insight into 160,000 years of East Asian population dynamics and biological adaptation" in Genome Biology.
Matthew J. Wooller et al., (2026) published "Adopted “mammoths” from Alaska turn out to be a whale's tale" in Journal of Quaternary Science.
Xu Han et al., (2026) published "Sedimentary ancient DNA from an artificial water feature in a regional city of the Tang Dynasty reveals the use of plant and animal resources by urban residents in the Central Plains, China" in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Danielle M. Grant et al., (2026) published "X-rays have little impact on estimates of biodiversity from marine sedimentary ancient DNA metabarcoding" in Marine Micropaleontology.
Katharina Dulias et al., (2026) published "Ostracod Genetic Variability in Response to Lake Level-Driven Salinity Dynamics in Nam Co, Central Tibetan Plateau, in the Past Two Millennia" in Ecology and Evolution.
New Positions
A four year Postdoctoral position in sedimentary DNA analysis of human-wildlife relationships is open for applications at the Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden.
The position is part of the ERC-funded Starting Grant project WILDERFARM - ‘Where the wild things were: how the rise of farming changed human-wildlife relationships’. WILDERFARM explores the significant changes in human-wildlife relationships that occurred with the rise of farming in western Europe between 6000 and 2000 BCE. Using an interdisciplinary combination of methods, WILDERFARM examines how early farmers renegotiated the age-old relationship with wild animals and how the rise of farming and its activities, such as livestock grazing and crop husbandry, affected wildlife.
Application deadline is the 12th of January 2025. If you'd like more information, please contact Dr Nathalie Brusgaard .
Abstract submissions
The deadline for abstract submissions for EGU 2026 in Vienna, Austria (3rd - 8th May 2026) is 15th Jan 2026
The deadline for INQUA 2027 in Lucknow, India (28th Jan - 3rd Feb) is 15th Feb 2026
If you have a query or something to announce, click here, and if you have a recent paper to share in the next newsletter, let us know.