Antarctic Summer Science Lecture: The Largest Land Animals in Antarctica - Dr Byron Adams, Brigham Young University.
Come along and learn more about Antarctic soil ecosystems and how they link to broader global questions about climate change, biodiversity, and stewardship. Antarctica emerges not as a frozen curiosity, but as a powerful natural laboratory and an early warning system for ecological change on a rapidly warming planet.
A talk for all audiences. Everybody is welcome.
The Largest Land Animals in Antarctica - Dr Byron Adams
Saturday 7 February
3-4pm
Auaha Hīhī, He Hononga | Connection, Ground Level, Tūranga
Free, register here
Antarctica is often imagined as a continent defined by ice, penguins, and vast emptiness. Yet in the ice-free landscapes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, one of the coldest and driest deserts on Earth, complex ecosystems persist in places that appear almost entirely lifeless. This talk explores how and why life survives there, and what these systems can teach us about resilience, limits, and ecological change. Drawing on research from the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, Dr. Byron Adams introduces audiences to the “charismatic megafauna” of terrestrial Antarctica. Not seals or penguins, but microscopic animals such as nematodes, tardigrades, mites, and springtails that dominate Antarctic soils and quietly control nutrient cycling, energy flow, and ecosystem functioning.
The presentation traces how these organisms have endured extreme cold, desiccation, and repeated glacial cycles, the remarkable physiological strategies that allow them to shut down and restart life, and how long-term data now show that these communities are responding to contemporary climate change. Some species are declining, others are expanding, and the structure of entire ecosystems is beginning to shift in ways that were predicted decades ago.
Set against the unique Antarctic context familiar to many Kiwis, this talk connects Antarctic soil ecosystems to broader global questions about climate change, biodiversity, and stewardship. Antarctica emerges not as a frozen curiosity, but as a powerful natural laboratory and an early warning system for ecological change on a rapidly warming planet.
Byron is a professor of biology and department chair at Brigham Young University, where he studies how life survives and adapts in some of the most extreme environments on Earth. He has worked in Antarctica since 2002 and has spent over two decades conducting field research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, the coldest and driest desert on the planet.
Byron is a principal investigator with the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research program, an NSF-supported effort that has tracked Antarctic ecosystems for over 30 years to understand how they respond to environmental change. His research focuses on soil ecosystems and microscopic animals such as nematodes and tardigrades, organisms that play outsized roles in Antarctic food webs despite being nearly invisible to the
naked eye.
Beyond his research, Byron is deeply involved in international Antarctic science coordination and policy, working with global partners to shape long-term ecological monitoring and conservation priorities for the continent. He is passionate about communicating science to public audiences and about using Antarctica as a lens for understanding resilience, limits, and change in ecosystems worldwide.
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