Journal Entries

2004-05

 

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January 7, 2005:

Again today, there is an amazing amount of brash ice in the water around Palmer, so much so that Vinny has decided to pull all the boats out of the water. When we want to go out in a boat, he takes a small crane and lifts our boat up, then drives it to the dock and lowers it into the water.

We head out to Norsel Point, the farthest away from Palmer we've been (still not very far, maybe two miles). Another amazing place for wildlife — we see a lot of elephant seals — this part of Antarctica is not a breeding ground for these seals, but we see them sort of practicing a lot of their breeding season behaviors — some young males are sparring in the water, and lots of females are laying around in wallows — areas with pools of water where large groups of females stay. At breeding grounds, a wallow with many females has just one breeding male (these are enormous — we haven't seen any here), and the male is very territorial — if another male comes near, they will often fight for control of the area. But here it’s just practice, and it’s fun to watch the young males play around. It’s also interesting to watch the females move around on the island. They aren't built very well for travel on land, so they have to sort of heave themselves along the ground – click here for a movie of one making its way towards a pool of water.

On Norsel Point we find very few Belgica larvae, but a huge number of Belgica adults — these are basically little wingless flies. Belgica adults live for less than two weeks, and their only job is to mate. We see hundreds of them, and observe their mating behavior, too. Unlike the elephant seals, in these midges it’s the males that group together, and then one female enters the mating aggregation to be fertilized (click here for a short video). Midges where you live probably work like this, too. Ever seen a little swarm of tiny flies in the summer? It's most likely an aggregation of male midges, waiting for a female to enter.

I am given the job of collecting as many adults as I can for us to study — the tool I use for this is called an aspirator — entomologists often call it a "pooter". Scott made this one from spare parts we found around the lab — it’s just a plastic jar with a thin hose coming out the side to suck up insects — you create the suction by drawing in air through the bigger hose coming out of the top of the jar. Don't worry, the hose you put your mouth on has a gauze filter on it, so you don't breathe in any bugs. I am able to collect lots of adults, enough for Dave to do some heat shock experiments.

 

- Luke Sandro

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January 8, 2005:

Today we take another trip to Bonaparte Point in search of more larvae — the samples we've taken are not giving us as many larvae as we'd like — we think we just need to find some better spots, and perfect our Berlese techniques a little. Sure enough, we find some really good areas, and take samples from each, which look like they're crawling with larvae. I should mention that we're not affecting the population numbers of these insects at all — the population of Belgica around here is enormous — they have literally been on every island we've visited. The samples we take make no significant difference in their numbers, and even collecting a few thousand is the equivalent of swatting mosquitoes in the summer.

However, though our research is not affecting Belgica's numbers, it appears that something else is. Rick studied these larvae 25 years ago, and on this trip he has noticed a big difference in the Belgica's population density (number of larvae per unit of area). He says it was much easier to find large numbers of them in 1981. It appears that something is decreasing the population. There are two aspects of the Antarctic environment that have changed drastically in the past few decades the average temperature has gone up about 9°F and the amount of ultraviolet light coming through the atmosphere is much higher. Most scientists think that human pollution is the cause of both of these changes. Regardless, these changes are affecting most Antarctic species, in some cases causing them to move from their normal habitats. It is possible that this is the case with Belgica.

- Luke Sandro

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January 9, 2005:

It's Sunday — the support staff pretty much gets the day off here on Sundays — everyone makes their own meals (although there are always lots of leftovers to choose from). We can’t really afford to take a day off from science — we have so little time here — but I do find time to take a short nap, which I really need. Since it doesn't get dark here, I am getting much less sleep than I'm used to — it is starting to wear on me. We get things done today, but in a pretty slow-paced, relaxing way.

- Luke Sandro

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January 10, 2005:

Today Scott and I begin to test the dehydration of Belgica larvae. We put many groups of the larvae into chambers that have 98.2% relative humidity — we weigh the larvae after different lengths of time in the chambers, so we can tell how much water they are losing. Believe it or not, after 12 hours in 98.2% humidity, the larvae had lost 10% of their water, and they'd lost 20% of it after 24 hours! They dehydrate even in very humid air, which is interesting. We are very interested in dehydration, because it is possible that Belgica uses protective dehydration — loss of water that helps an insect survive things like freezing, heat shock and other stresses.

- Luke Sandro

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January 11, 2005

Today we take another trip to Norsel Point and Torgersen Island (“Torgie”). We have two jobs — first, we place several devices in the places we've found larvae. They're called HOBO temperature loggers, and they will help us find out what range of temperatures larvae actually experience on these islands. We can test the temperature limits of larvae in the lab, but it’s useful to know what they really go through in nature. The HOBOs automatically take temperature readings as often as you program them to, and when you finally bring them home they transmit the data right to your computer. Cool, huh? Secondly, Scott and I collect samples of soil and larvae from three different sites on Torgie — a low, wet site, a medium site, and a high, drier site. Our goal is to find the vapor pressure of both the soil and the larvae that live in it from all three sites. Remember that my arch-enemy the osmometer is the device we’ll use to measure the vapor pressure of these samples. Vapor pressure is a function of how much water a sample contains, but more importantly of how many solutes are dissolved in said water (like salts). The more solutes, the less the water wants to evaporate. So we take samples of dirt and larvae from the various points on Torgie, then tomorrow I’ll measure the vapor pressure of the dirt, then of the larvae, from each spot. We’ll also bake some to get an idea of their dry weight, so we know how much water was in them. The comparison of the larvae vs. the soil will hopefully tell us some stuff about how and why water moves from soil to larvae and vice versa — if we find that Belgica decreases its vapor pressure in drier soils, it may mean that the larva is altering the concentration of solutes in its blood to protect itself from dehydration in conditions where the soil tends to suck out its water.

This trip is still fun, but it is cold and muddy and rainy, so by the time we're done, we are soaked and cold and smell strongly of penguin guano. It's good to get back.

 

- Luke Sandro

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January 12, 2005:

Today is a great day. We spend most of it in the lab — everyone is starting to get real data from their experiments that look really interesting. The osmometer readings on the Torgie soil samples and larvae are consistent with what we expected — the next step is to take readings from larvae that we dehydrate in the lab, to see if they're increasing their solutes in response to getting dried out. We’ll start that in the next couple of days.

Joe has found some amazing stuff with his Northern blots. Most animals only turn on their HSP-70 gene (to produce the heat-shock protein, remember?) in response to some environmental stress — the rest of the time the gene is turned off. However, Joe's blots are showing that Belgica may produce HSP-70 all the time. This is unusual, to say the least — the only other comparable animals are some species of Antarctic fish — makes sense, right? Also, as Dave has been heat-shocking larvae, Joe has been analyzing them, too. We expected them to upregulate the gene (produce more HSP-70) in response to heat, but it looks like they don't. In fact, after 24 hours at room temp, all the larvae die, without increasing their HSP-70 at all. So it looks like they produce a very constant level of the protein, and would sooner die than increase it in response to heat — of course, in nature they would almost never experience room temperature. Joe would like to find some other stress that does cause HSP-70 upregulation.

Rick gives a science presentation with a slide show in the evening for the other folks here, to explain some of the work we're doing. As he explains that Belgica is Antarctica's largest terrestrial animal, he puts this slide on the screen, which he and I have created with some fancy computer tricks. It gets a good laugh.

It has been drop-dead gorgeous outside all day, so after Rick's talk, Joe and Scott and I hike up the glacier behind the station. It is about a mile, and from the top we get an incredible view of the surrounding area. Joe has made it his mission to throw a football in every unusual place he can, and this is about as unusual as you get — we toss the ball around for a good half hour. We stay until the sun sets at 11:30 pm, then head home.

 

- Luke Sandro

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