Kevin Nota

Kevin Nota
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology | EVA · Department of Evolutionary Genetics

PhD
Postdoc

About

20
Publications
10,907
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348
Citations
Introduction
I have a PhD in molecular paleoecology from Uppsala University. Currently I am a postdoc in the Max Planck Research Group for Ancient Environmental Genomics. My main research interest is in population genomics from ancient environmental samples.
Education
August 2017 - April 2022
Uppsala University
Field of study
  • Molecular Paleoecology
September 2016 - August 2017
University of Central Lancashire
Field of study
  • Forensic and Conservation Genetics
September 2012 - July 2016
Hogeschool Van Hall Larenstein
Field of study
  • Biotechnology

Publications

Publications (20)
Article
Full-text available
Hybridization capture is an emerging method making use of short oligonucleotide baits to enrich DNA libraries for genomic fragments of specific organisms thus enabling detection of their presence in environmental samples. Although it offers a primer‐independent alternative to metabarcoding, little empirical work has been dedicated to characterizing...
Chapter
Full-text available
Sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) is continuing to revolutionise our understanding of past biological and geological processes by retrieving and analysing the ancient DNA preserved in lake, cave, open terrestrial, midden, permafrozen, and marine environments (Crump 2021). The study of sedaDNA began in the late 1990s (Coolen and Overmann 1998) with...
Chapter
Full-text available
Predicting and anticipating the effects of current and future climate warming on plant communities requires a comprehensive understanding of past ecosystem dynamics. In this context, Palaeoecological studies using sedimentary ancient DNA (sedDNA) offer unique advantages over conventional pollen and macrofossil methods due to higher taxonomic resolu...
Article
Ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) data are close to enabling insights into past global-scale biodiversity dynamics at unprecedented taxonomic extent and resolution. However, achieving this potential requires solutions that bridge bioinformatics and paleoecoinformatics. Essential needs include support for dynamic taxonomic inferences, dynamic age in...
Article
Anthropogenic activities are triggering global changes in the environment, causing entire communities of plants, pollinators and their interactions to restructure, and ultimately leading to species declines. To understand the mechanisms behind community shifts and declines, as well as monitoring and managing impacts, a global effort must be made to...
Article
The animal gut microbiome has been implicated in a number of key biological processes, ranging from digestion to behavior, and has also been suggested to facilitate local adaptation. Yet studies in wild animals rarely compare multiple populations that differ ecologically, which is the level at which local adaptation may occur. Further, few studies...
Article
Full-text available
Contrasting theories exist regarding how Norway spruce (Picea abies) recolonized Fennoscandia after the last glaciation and both early Holocene establishments from western microrefugia and late Holocene colonization from the east have been postulated. Here, we show that Norway spruce was present in southern Fennoscandia as early as 14.7 ± 0.1 cal....
Thesis
Full-text available
Palaeoecological studies on lake sediments and peat archives have provided fundamental knowledge about past environments, nevertheless, a lot remains to be learned. In this thesis, I focussed on plant ancient DNA extracted from sedimentary archives (sedaDNA), in combination with DNA from living trees with the aims of: (1) investigating different ex...
Preprint
Full-text available
Anthropogenic activities are leading to changes in the environment at global scales, and understanding these changes requires rapid, high-throughput methods of assessment. Pollen DNA metabarcoding and related methods provide advantages in throughput and efficiency over traditional methods, such as microscopic identification of pollen and visual obs...
Preprint
Full-text available
Conservation efforts tend to focus on populations that are genetically differentiated without paying attention to their ecological differentiation. However, isolated populations may be ecologically unique, an important aspect for the design of appropriate conservation measures for endangered species. Here we investigate the interplay between diet a...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Since the seminal paper in 1998 (Coolen and Overmann), sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) has become a powerful tool in paleoecology to reconstruct past changes in terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. Still, sedaDNA is an emerging tool and there is a need for calibrations and validations to ensure the reliability of sedaDNA as a proxy to reconstruc...
Article
Full-text available
The use of lake sedimentary DNA to track the long-term changes in both terrestrial and aquatic biota is a rapidly advancing field in paleoecological research. Although largely applied nowadays, knowledge gaps remain in this field and there is therefore still research to be conducted to ensure the reliability of the sedimentary DNA signal. Building...
Article
Full-text available
The hen harrier is a heavily persecuted bird of prey in Great Britain since its diet includes Red grouse, a game bird shot in driven and walked-up grouse shooting. Unlike walked-up shooting where shooters walk up moors and flush grouse with dogs, in driven grouse shooting the grouse are driven by beaters towards static shooters. Driven grouse moors...
Article
Full-text available
At this moment, no method is available to objectively estimate the temperature to which skeletal remains have been exposed during a fire. Estimating this temperature can provide crucial information in a legal investigation. Exposure of bone to heat results in observable and measurable changes, including a change in colour. To determine the exposure...
Chapter
The field of ancient DNA has received much attention since the mid-1980s, when the first sequences of extinct species were obtained from museum and archaeological specimens. Early analyses focused on organellar DNA (mitochondrial in animals and chloroplast in plants) as these are present in multiple copies in the cells making isolation and analyses...
Article
Full-text available
Literature on luminescent properties of thermally altered human remains is scarce and contradictory. Therefore, the luminescence of heated bone was systemically reinvestigated. A heating experiment was conducted on fresh human bone, in two different media, and cremated human remains were recovered from a modern crematory. Luminescence was excited w...
Presentation
Information on the temperature and duration that skeletal remains have been exposed to, can be crucial in a legal investigation. Because the bone matrix consists out of an in- and organic component it changes in a predictable sequence when exposed to heat, first dehydration, than carbonization, followed by calcination. There is much discussion on t...
Poster
To reconstruct the perimortem events and for ethical reasons it is of great importance to retrieve all human remains from a scene, whether it is a crime scene or an accidental fire scene. The recovery of human remains from fire scenes can be difficult because the fragmentary remains blend in easily with the structural debris, hence in some cases no...

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