My nematode teacher: Lessons from Antarctic soil nematodes on how to isolate from Covid

Abigail Jackson, MSc Student, Department of Biology, Brigham Young University: BSc, Colorado State University

Abby will discuss impacts of COVID-19 on Antarctic fieldwork and the unexpected opportunities. During the 2021/22 austral summer, Abby spent 4 months servicing stream gages and collecting soil samples with the NSF Long Term Ecological Research program in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. A quarantine period prior to reaching the US McMurdo Station required channeling her “inner nematode” (microscopic worm-like animals) that exist in extreme and isolated pockets of the ice free region. Abby’s research is a story of soil nematode populations isolated for thousands of years due to past climate change.

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