Ancient environmental DNA reveals the distinct fingerprints of whaling and climate change on Antarctic marine biodiversity
- 1University of Copenhagen
Abstract
The Southern Ocean is a disproportionately large contributor to Earth system processes, playing a crucial role in the global transport of carbon, oxygen and heat. It also hosts enormous seasonal biological productivity that supports diverse endemic marine biodiversity. Industrial whaling in the first half of the 20th century and recent human-driven climate change have both profoundly altered Antarctic ecosystems, but ecological surveys of these impacts are limited to well-known taxa in the short period since monitoring began. Here, we analysed five sediment records to reconstruct more than two centuries of ecosystem change across the Western Antarctic Peninsula, spanning periods before and during major human impacts. Environmental DNA metabarcoding of these records revealed substantial biodiversity shifts, with change accelerating in recent decades. We find a significant role for both climate change and whaling in restructuring communities, identifying unique variance in whole-community change explained by each driver. Moreover, we find a negative association between whaling and metazoan families which feed from the water column, suggesting that pre-whaling ecosystems had greater pelagic productivity. Overall, our results reveal baseline Antarctic biodiversity from long before observational records and identify a distinct fingerprint of human drivers in this fragile, rapidly changing ecosystem.
Related
- Environmental DNA substrates capture complementary dimensions of insect biodiversity
- Polar Seabed Observation Systems reveal winter diel rhythms and environmental drivers of euphausiids in Great Wall Bay, Antarctic Peninsula
- Ancient genomes reveal distinct human dispersals and social stratification in the settlement history of western Remote Oceania
- eDNA reveals urban habitat-specific sorting of a mixed regional fish fauna into distinct biodiversity and life-history assemblages
- Car-Mounted Airborne eDNA Sampling Detects Landscape Scale Biodiversity Turnover Along Environmental Gradients.
BibTeX
@misc{holman2026ancient,
title = {{Ancient environmental DNA reveals the distinct fingerprints of whaling and climate change on Antarctic marine biodiversity}},
author = {L. E. Holman and M. Mason and L. B. Pedersen and J. Mueller and F. Lamy and E. A. Genelt-Yanovskiy and G. Zampirolo and T. G. Froeslev and R. J. W. Brewin and R. H. Thurstan and C. M. Roberts and M. W. Pedersen and S. Gopalakrishnan and J. Scourse and K. Bohmann},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.30.763115},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.30.763115v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Ancient environmental DNA reveals the distinct fingerprints of whaling and climate change on Antarctic marine biodiversity
AU - L. E. Holman
AU - M. Mason
AU - L. B. Pedersen
AU - J. Mueller
AU - F. Lamy
AU - E. A. Genelt-Yanovskiy
AU - G. Zampirolo
AU - T. G. Froeslev
AU - R. J. W. Brewin
AU - R. H. Thurstan
AU - C. M. Roberts
AU - M. W. Pedersen
AU - S. Gopalakrishnan
AU - J. Scourse
AU - K. Bohmann
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.30.763115
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.30.763115v1
AB - The Southern Ocean is a disproportionately large contributor to Earth system processes, playing a crucial role in the global transport of carbon, oxygen and heat. It also hosts enormous seasonal biological productivity that supports diverse endemic marine biodiversity. Industrial whaling in the first half of the 20th century and recent human-driven climate change have both profoundly altered Antarctic ecosystems, but ecological surveys of these impacts are limited to well-known taxa in the short period since monitoring began. Here, we analysed five sediment records to reconstruct more than two centuries of ecosystem change across the Western Antarctic Peninsula, spanning periods before and during major human impacts. Environmental DNA metabarcoding of these records revealed substantial biodiversity shifts, with change accelerating in recent decades. We find a significant role for both climate change and whaling in restructuring communities, identifying unique variance in whole-community change explained by each driver. Moreover, we find a negative association between whaling and metazoan families which feed from the water column, suggesting that pre-whaling ecosystems had greater pelagic productivity. Overall, our results reveal baseline Antarctic biodiversity from long before observational records and identify a distinct fingerprint of human drivers in this fragile, rapidly changing ecosystem.
ER -