Many marine species depend on nurseries during early life stages to promote growth and increase survival to maturity, supporting stock replenishment and stability. Since the nursery was first formally defined 25 years ago as a habitat that yields a greater-than-average contribution of juvenile recruits to an adult population, researchers have repeatedly revisited the concept and debated the best nursery identification approach...

We present the first long‐term, highly resolved prokaryotic cell concentration record obtained from a polar ice core. This record, obtained from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet ( WAIS ) Divide ( WD ) ice core, spanned from the Last Glacial Maximum ( LGM ) to the early Holocene ( EH ) and showed distinct fluctuations in prokaryotic cell concentration coincident with major climatic states. The time series also revealed a ~1,500‐yea...