Summary
Dear sedaDNA enthusiasts,
Hello and welcome to the February 2026 newsletter! This past month has been productive in terms of new papers, preprints and positions with six, one and two respectively. The deadline for submitting an abstract to INQUA 2027 is also looming (15th Feb) so submit soon if you plan to do so. There are two sessions organised by members of this society which have been linked below, but there are many relevant sessions at the conference as well.
Hope you have a happy, healthy and productive month of February,
The sedaDNA society organising board
New papers
Kyle Michael James Mayers et al., (2026) published "First-year sea ice history in the Arctic Ocean inferred from ancient DNA of Polerella glacialis over the past 50,000 years" in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Jazmín Ramos-Madrigal et al., (2026) published "The potential of plant palaeogenomic research" in Current Opinion in Plant Biology.
Jose L. Rodriguez et al., (2026) published "Polymerase Chain Reaction. Perturbation Theory and Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence-Experimental Microbiome Analysis: Applications to Ancient DNA and Tree Soil Metagenomics Cases of Study" in Advanced.
Mary Edwards et al., (2026) published "Beringian flora and fauna from sedaDNA at Duvanny Yar, Sakha Republic, during marine isotope stages 2 and 3" in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research.
Ciara Wanket et al., (2026) published "Continuity of eastern Beringian megafauna phylogenetic diversity following deposition of the Late Pleistocene Dawson tephra" in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research.
Flore M.D. Wijnands et al., (2026) published "The promise of sedimentary ancient DNA as a proxy to understand Arctic Ocean palaeoecology and palaeoenvironments" in Marine Micropaleontology.
Preprints
Marieke Beaulieu et al., (2026) submitted the preprint "Dynamic sedimentary ancient DNA models of Fennoscandic Holocene plant communities reveal the role of temperature and competition" which is available on BioRXiv.
New Positions
A PhD position at the Universtiy of Oslo on palaeoecology and sedimentary ancient DNA is currently accepting applicants.
The interdisciplinary ERC-Synergy project “EcoArch: Ecological archaeologies of the Afrotropics”, funded by the European Research Council H2020 scheme, seeks to understand the drivers of landscape change across the Afrotropics over the last 6000 years. The project will collect and analyse diverse types of data for the reconstruction of changes in climate, biodiversity and wildfires across different biomes and examine the role of human activities in shaping the landscape. The PhD fellow will analyse palaeoecological change using sedimentary ancient DNA, focusing on several key sites. The successful candidate will travel and join fieldwork in up to three of these locations, perform laboratory analyses together with a research technician, and perform the bioinformatic and statistical analyses of the genomic data.
Application deadline is the 6th of February 2026. If you'd like more information, please contact Sanne Boessenkool
A three year Post Doc position at the Universtiy of Tromsø on bioinformatics of eDNA is currently accepting applicants.
The position will focus on bioinformatic analyses of shotgun sequence data from lake sediments collected from many sites across arctic-alpine landscape in Europe. Currently, shotgun sequencing does not yield reliable identification on species level for vascular plants. Using our genome skim reference library PhyloNorway combined with 15X and full genome data, the Post Doc will develop new methods for processing and annotating DNA shotgun data with a focus on vascular plants. The position holder will also participate in teaching, outreach, and methodological assistance to the ArcEcoGen members. It is expected that the position holder will participate in research group collaboration and professional networks nationally and internationally and will also be supported to obtain external funding from national and international funding agencies (e.g. RCN/EU).
Application deadline is the 17th of February 2026. If you'd like more information, please contact Prof. Inger Alsos.
Conference sessions
The sessions Sedimentary Ancient DNA and Paleogenomics: Tracing Ecosystem Change and Climate Dynamics Through Time and SedaDNA-based reconstruction of paleoecosystems are accepting abstracts at Inqua 2027.
If you have a query or something to annonce, click here, and if you have a recent paper to share in the next newsletter, let us know.