A cross-disciplinary approach to understanding Antarctic Ice Sheet histories: combining cosmogenic nuclides with records of Antarctic springtails in Dronning Maud Land

Our understanding of Antarctic Ice Sheet evolution has largely relied on geological evidence from a combination of onshore and offshore archives. In particular, terrestrial cosmogenic nuclides (e.g., ¹⁰Be, ²⁶Al, ³⁶Cl, ¹⁴C) have now been extensively employed to assess the timing and drivers of past ice sheet change. Yet, such chronologies are incomplete, can be compromised by complex burial-exposure histories, and are not ideally suited to reconstructing the long-term (hundreds of thousands to millions of years) evolution of the ice sheet.

To address this gap in understanding long-term Antarctic Ice Sheet evolution, we investigate the application of a cross-disciplinary approach that incorporates a combination of geological and biological evidence. Recent work has implied that certain biota, such as Antarctic springtails (Arthropoda: Collembola), survived consecutive glacial periods in ice-free refugia by shifting up and down nunataks or on moraines above the ice (see: Stevens and Mackintosh, 2023; https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0590). Due to these prolonged periods of isolation, springtails have now developed high levels of species endemism across Antarctica. These species are often short-range endemics, and now combined with extensive molecular data are the only terrestrial invertebrate group with unequivocal Antarctic provenance across successive glacial maxima on the continent. As a result, incorporating these growing records of Antarctic springtail distribution into chronological studies may yield a more complete understanding of ice sheet evolution through time. Here, we demonstrate the use of this combined approach across the whole of Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica.