Lake sediment archives covering several glacial cycles are scarce in the Southern Hemisphere and they challenging to date. Here we present chronostratigraphy of oldest continuous lake archive Tasmania, Australia; a 5.5 m 270 ka (Marine Isotope Stage 8) core from Selina. We employ radiometric dating (radiocarbon optically stimulated luminescence) relative (geomagnetic climate comparisons). Bayes...

Subglacial microbial habitats are widespread in glaciated regions of our planet. Some of these environments have been isolated from the atmosphere and from sunlight for many thousands of years. Consequently, ecosystem processes must rely on energy gained from the oxidation of inorganic substrates or detrital organic matter. Subglacial Lake Whillans (SLW) is one of more than 400 subglacial lakes...

The Antarctic biota has evolved over the last 100 million years in increasingly isolated and cold conditions. As a result, Antarctic species, from micro-organisms to vertebrates, have adapted to life at extremely low temperatures, including changes in the genome, physiology and ecological traits such as life history. Coupled with cycles of glaciation that have promoted speciation in the Antarct...

Antarctica provides an excellent environment to examine the natural and background aerosols in the atmosphere over snow and ice. The Indian efforts (metrological measurements) at Antarctica were initiated with the establishment of the first Antarctic station in Eastern Antarctica during the first Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica (ISEA) in 1981. The detailed and systematic characteriza...

We investigated the potential role of Antarctic tourism in the introduction of human-associated pathogens into Antarctic wildlife. We collected and analyzed 233 fecal samples from eight bird species. The samples were collected at six localities on the Antarctic Peninsula, which often is visited by tourists. Every sample was investigated for pathogens of potential human origin: Campylobacter jej...

Iron redox cycling in metal-rich, hypersaline, anoxic brines plays a central role in the biogeochemical evolution of life on Earth, and similar brines with the potential to harbor life are thought to exist elsewhere in the solar system. To investigate iron biogeochemical cycling in a terrestrial analog we determined the iron redox chemistry and isotopic signatures in the cryoencapsulated liquid...

Microorganisms play a dominant role in Antarctic ecosystems, yet little is known about how fungal diversity differs at sites with considerable human activity as compared to those that are remote and relatively pristine. Ross Island, Antarctica is the site of three historic expedition huts left by early explorers to the South Pole, Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackleton. The fungal diversity of t...