Following the recent resuscitation of a sample of moss which turned out to be more than 1,500 years old, Dr Luisa Orsini of the School of Bisociences describes, in a New York Times article entitled "A Growth Spurt at 1,500 Years Old" how it may be possible to use whatever is stored in ice or sediment as a sort of backup for biodiversity.
Dr Orsini goes on to say “one has to be really, really careful introducing something from the past.”
Dr Orsini is a molecular ecologist working at the interface of ecology, evolution and genetics/genomics. Her research interest is understanding how natural populations adapt and evolve in response to environmental changes. She uses as a model system the water flea Daphnia magna, a keystone species in lakes and ponds across Europe.
Read the full New York Times article here