ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Ecol. Evol.

Sec. Evolutionary and Population Genetics

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1295369

This article is part of the Research TopicBiodiversity of Antarctic and Subantarctic EcosystemsView all 11 articles

Effect of Climate History on the Genetic Structure of an Antarctic Soil Nematode

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Department of Biology, College of Life Sciences, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, United States
  • 2Monte L. Bean Life Sciences Museum, College of Life Sciences, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, United States
  • 3Department of Entomology and Nematology, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States
  • 4School of Global Environmental Sustainability, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States
  • 5Department of Biology, College of Natural Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States
  • 6Department of Plant Pathology, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Illinois, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Historical climate disturbances such as glacial cycling and fluctuating stream, lake, and sea levels strongly influence the distribution and evolutionary trajectories of Antarctic terrestrial species. Antarctic invertebrates, including the ubiquitous sentinel nematode species Scottnema lindsayae, are especially sensitive to climate disturbances. We tested hypotheses associated with the historical geographic and population genetic structure of this species as it occurs across the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. To reconstruct the influence of climate disturbance and ecological conditions on this species, partial mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I gene sequences were analyzed from individual S. lindsayae collected from sites across the McMurdo Dry Valleys reflecting opposing gradients of climate disturbance during the Last Glacial Maximum. We found that populations were strongly demarcated by geomorphic barriers, with distinct haplotypes associated with valleys except among valleys that experienced glacial advance and retreat during the LGM. Our work shows that contemporary populations of these animals are strongly structured by prior climate history and reinforced by subsequent ecological conditions. Such findings can be useful for understanding the processes that shape the distribution and abundance of these ecologically important animals and interpreting long-term monitoring of demographic shifts in response to changing climate trends in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

Keywords: Antarctica, biogeography, Climate disturbance, evolution, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Population Genetics, Polar, Sentinel species

Received: 16 Sep 2023; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Jackson, Leavitt, Porazinska, Wall, Powers, Harris and Adams. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Abigail C Jackson, Department of Biology, College of Life Sciences, Brigham Young University, Provo, 84604, Utah, United States

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