Summer 2015 Campaigns

How did the summer campaigns go? Here’s what NeAT researchers said about this summer’s work in Greenland and North America:

Northeast Greenland –Tomas Roslin (from University of Helsinki)

At Zackenberg, the summer was late, wet and snowy. To sample arthropods, we used skis until the end of June. A total of five people worked in the valley during different parts of the summer, with our main focus on fungal-plant, host-parasitoid and plant-pollinator interactions. Given the late summer, we miserably failed to implement the background herbivory project (our apologies!), but will try again next year. In the Arctic, no years are brothers…

Yukon – Shaun Turney (PhD student with Chris Buddle, from McGill University)

In July 2015, I studied Arctic arthropods along the Dempster Highway in the Yukon. The Dempster Highway makes a fascinating study system, with a huge amount of variety over a distance that can be driven easily in a day. In the north (67 deg N), the sun shone brightly at all hours, the mosquitoes swarmed, and tree stands looked like bonsai gardens. In the south (65 deg N), we experienced brief twilight nights, ground squirrels were abundant while mosquitoes were scant, and lush forests dominated some of the valleys.

South Greenland –Joe Bowden (from Aarhus University)

Toke T. Høye, myself and a number of others (Aarhus University) headed to Narsarsuaq, South Greenland over the summer in continuation and expansion of our monitoring program. It was a particularly late summer for us as snow was not melted from the mountain tops by the time I left during the final week of June. Oskar LP Hansen, who remained in Narsarsuaq for the summer noted that the rest of the summer was sunny and quite warm and much of the water that had accumulated during melt had vanished.

Alaska –Derek Sikes (from University of Alaska, Fairbanks)

Derek Sikes made short collecting trips to various places in Alaska this summer: Barrow, Galena, and Kantishna (first time for these three sites for me), and in the Aleutians to the islands of Adak, Atka, and Little Tanaga. Barrow is the northern most point in Alaska and a hotbed for climate change research. The last attempt at a comprehensive arthropod inventory of Barrow was published by Hurd in 1958.

Featured Arthropod: Aedes nigripes (Diptera: Culicidae)

Aedes nigripes (Zett, 1840) is probably the most abundant Arctic mosquito (Vockeroth 1954) and is found all across the Arctic. Its larvae grow rapidly in snowmelt tundra ponds during early summer and the adult females emerge to fiercely seek blood from caribou and other wildlife. Autogeny (i.e., reproducing without a blood meal) has been documented in this species (Corbett 1964, 1967) although it is unclear if this presumed adaptation to low blood-meal density is present in all populations (Culler, pers. obs.). In Greenland, the timing of pond thaw in spring strongly predicts its emergence time, and the number of immatures that survive to the adult stage depends on pond temperature and mortality from beetle predators (Culler et al. 2015). –L. Culler

References and links:

• Corbet, P.S. 1964. Autogeny and oviposition in Arctic mosquitoes. Nature 669.
• Corbet, P.S. 1967. Facultative autogeny in arctic mosquitoes. Nature 215:662-663.
• Culler, LE et al. 2015. In a warmer Arctic, mosquitoes avoid
  increased mortality from predators by growing faster. Proceedings of the Royal
  Society B. 282: 20151549
• Vockeroth, J.R. 1954. Notes on the identities and distributions of Aedes species of
  northern Canada, with a key to the females (Diptera: Culicidae). Canadian
  Entomologist 86:241-255.
• Why Giant Mosquitoes Are Suddenly Swarming Greenland
• Why the Arctic’s Big Mosquito Problem Is Getting a Lot Worse
• Arctic Mosquitoes Are Growing Faster With Rising Temperatures