Nature – Weiß et al. (2025): Carbon drawdown by algal blooms during Antarctic Cold Reversal from sedimentary ancient DNA
Josefine Friederike Weiß, Ulrike Herzschuh, Juliane Müller, Jie Liang, Maria-Elena Vorrath, Amedea Perfumo and Kathleen R. Stoof-Leichsenring, IN: Nature Geoscience, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01761-w
Modelling studies propose that the atmospheric CO₂ plateau during the Antarctic Cold Reversal is related to increased marine productivity. However, proxy constraints on the primary producer community are limited to the subset of groups that leave a fossil record. Here the authors applied ancient DNA shotgun metagenomics to samples from a marine sediment core to characterize the composition of the marine ecosystem across all trophic levels, finding that the haptophyte algae Phaeocystis antarcticawas the dominant primary producer during the event.