Why a scientific society needs a blog

I’ve been involved with the Entomological Society of Canada for a long time.  It’s a wonderful community of Canadian entomologists sharing an interest and enthusiasm for arthropods. The ESC’s activities are mostly centered around  its annual conference, its range of publications, and it offers a suite of awards and scholarships.  The society’s website also hosts career opportunities, photo contests, and a range of other rich and varied entomological content. The latest, big news for the society is that on 1 June, the ESC officially launched its own blog.  This blog was the brainchild of a few members of the society, and two great Canadian entomology bloggers, Crystal Ernst and Morgan Jackson, are the administrators of the blog.

The ESC blog: http://escsecblog.com/

So…why does a scientific society need a blog?  What’s the benefit to members of the society, to the society itself, and what’s the benefit for the broader entomological community?  Here are some thoughts about this:

1) Visibility:  it’s a tough time for scientific societies – funding is tight, and for a lot of people, the value of memberships to societies may seem less important than it once was.  Therefore, increased visibility though an on-line presence is important. A static website is essential, but a blog has a fluidity and dynamic presence that is hard to match with a website.  An active blog with well-written and interesting content will do a lot to increase a society’s visibility.  The visibility from an active blog is also global in its reach.

2) Opportunities to contribute:  the ESC blog will have dozens of contributors – means anybody with an interest in entomology (regardless of their profession and educational background) has an opportunity to write something for a broader audience.  Blog posts are often easier to write, they are shorter than research papers, and the content need not be vetted through a peer-review process.  It’s a forum for creative ideas, stories, photographs, and fun facts about insects.  The blog already has a couple of nice examples to illustrate this point.  For example, Chris Cloutier, a naturalist at the Morgan Arboretum on the Island of Montreal, just wrote a lovely post about the Hackberry Emperor.  Chris is an example of a different kind of entomologist – he’s not a research scientist, nor is his primary profession Entomology.  However, he does outreach, has a wealth of expertise and  talent, and he has a lot to offer the entomological community.  These kind of opportunities create an environment of inclusion for a society – members have a voice and can share their ideas and expertise.  Non-members can also contribute and recognize that there is a strong community associated with the ESC (…and perhaps some of the non-members will see the value of the society and join).

Screen shot of Chris Cloutier’s post

3) Economics: more than ever before, scientific societies are struggling to maintain members, and balance their books.  A blog is a cheap and effective way to promote their science to the world and the cost can be as little as a domain name.  I can think of no other method by which a society can promote itself at this cost point.  You could even argue that the time for static websites may be coming to a close since they are costly to host, require people with specific technical skills, and require a lot of back-end support.  The good blog sites can be administered by people with relatively few of these skills (I’m proof of that!!).

The ESC logo

4) Marketing and branding:  a high quality blog helps a society get its brand to a broad audience, and helps to market the society to the world.   The ESC has a long and wonderful history, but its main audience over the years has mostly been academics, research scientists, and students of entomology.   The ESC brand has excellence and quality behind it and that kind of brand should be shared, expanded, and through this process, the society will hopefully gain positive exposure and more members.

5) Communication: At the end of the day, knowledge is something to be shared.  Scientific communication is a fast-changing field and one that is making all of us reconsider how we talk and write about our interests.   I think we all have a responsibility to do outreach.  There is so much mis-information out on the Internet, and people with specialized and well-honed skills must be heard and must have a means to share accurate information in a clear and effective manner – e.g., a society blog. I also think many entomologist are perfectly positioned to do effective outreach (I’ve written about this before).  Part of the ESC’s mandate is dissemination of knowledge about insects and social media is a key piece of any communication strategy.

What do you think?  Can you think of other reasons why scientific societies need to embrace social media?  Please share your ideas!

I will finish with a stronger statement:  scientific societies are perfectly positioned to have the BEST blogs on the Internet.  A scientific society is a community, a community with history, and a community built on high level of expertise.  A scientific society also provides a structure and framework for bringing together high quality knowledge about a particular topic.  A blog can be amazingly strong with this kind of support.  A society is also about people and these people work tirelessly behind the scenes to facilitate the dissemination of high quality content.   These people, structured in committees, and with oversight from an executive committee, can provide tangible support that will help to keep a blog from becoming unidimensional.  The ESC’s blog administrators (Crystal and Morgan) know how to keep the content of high quality, and know how to put all the pieces together – and they know they can do this because they have an entire community behind them.  The society is committed to supporting the blog and for that reason, there is reason to be optimistic about its long-term success.  Please follow the blog!    

Urban field work: Pollinators in Montreal

I finally managed to get a little bit of field work in this week.  Although some would question whether it’s REALLY field work, since it involved driving to a couple of cemeteries and community gardens in the city of Montreal!  This urban field work is the start of a terrific new Master’s project by student Étienne Normandin.  Here he is, happily doing field work in a community garden:

Sweeping for bees (and other insects) in a Montreal community garden

Étienne is worked with Valérie Fournier and me in a collaborative project about bees in Montreal.  In this project, we are interesting in asking about the diversity and community structure of wild and domesticated bees in urban areas, and we are working in two major urban centres: Montreal and Quebec City.   Over the past couple of weeks, Étienne has been setting up traps in community gardens and other habitats (including cemeteries) to assess the bee biodiversity.   Étienne is using a combination of approaches to collect bees, including sweep-netting (as pictured above) and  elevated pan traps, as illustrated here (the different colours are used to attract different kind of bees):

Étienne setting up elevated pan traps, to collect bees

This is the very start of what will be an interesting and important project, especially given the concern about the losses of bees, and the economic and ecological consequence of changing pollinator communities.  I will continue to post developments in this project.  And, I warmly welcome Étienne to the Arthropod Ecology laboratory!

You are always within three feet of a spider: Fact or Fiction?

A lovely crab spider (Thomisidae).

Last week I wrote a post about the life history of Arctic wolf spiders – and in that post I discussed how some of our recent research results show wolf spider densities in Arctic tundra habitats are just under 0.5 per square metre.  Morgan Jackson commented on that post, and asked about whether it was true that you are always within six feet of a spider.  This is one of those common myths (along with ‘do spiders bite?).

A quick scan on the Internet suggests this myth can be stated in many ways (e.g., within a metre, within six feet, within three feet, etc.)  but you get the point: are you always close to spiders? .  This ‘myth’ has been submitted to Mythbusters  as one that the show should tackle,  and ‘yahoo answers‘ has this question – some of the answers are hilarious (e.g., not when you are swimming).   So…is it fact or fiction?  When in doubt, let’s go look at the scientific evidence.

What does the scientific literature tell us?

As mentioned in my post last week, our laboratory just published a paper in the Canadian Journal of Zoology about wolf spiders in the Arctic.  In this work, wolf spiders occurred at densities of close to 0.5 per square meter.  In some of my own earlier work in Alberta (more shameless self-promotion! see Buddle, 2000), I estimated densities of wolf spiders (in a forest environment) to be between 0.5 and 1 per square meter.   Not long ago, I had a discussion with a PhD student working in Alaska, and she also had densities estimates of wolf spiders within a similar range.  Kiss & Samu published a paper in 2000 that was about densities of wolf spiders in agroecosystems in Europe, and their estimates were at a minimum of three adults per square metre.

A wolf spider (Lycosidae) – they are everywhere!

Those aforementioned estimates are for one family of spiders only (the wolf spiders, Lycosidae), and wolf spiders are active and easy to see.  I would argue that densities of other spider families are likely higher than wolf spiders.  Most spiders are quite small and easy to miss, but they are everywhere.

In a classic and seminal paper by Turnbull (1973) (all Arachnologists should read that paper!) there are a series of estimates of spider densities in a range of habitats – and these are estimates for all spiders, not just a single family.   The lowest estimate he provides is from work in a Polish meadow where densities of 0.64 spiders per square metre were reported.  The highest density was 842 spiders per square metre in an English pasture. Turnbull averaged all previous published estimates and ended with a mean of 130.8 spiders per square meter.  Turnbull does point that it is kind of a meaningless statistic, except that it helps us tackle the question of interest: Is there always a spider within three feet of you…?

So…. in most “natural” habitats, I think it is true that you are always within three feet of a spider.

There are some exceptions, of course.  Here are some:

-spiders are not nearly as common in heavily managed, monoculture habitats (e.g., turf grass, golf courses, some urban greenspaces)

-spiders are not as common in buildings as in natural habitats (although they are there, as I’ve written about in posts about the zebra spider, cellar spider, and ceiling spider)

-in Northern climates, spiders are not active in the winter months- so although you could still be close to them (i.e, they are under the snow, somewhere…), it’s quite a different context

-spiders are terrestrial, so you are not close to spiders when you are swimming!

-on the theme of ridiculous exceptions, spiders don’t tend to be common on trains, in airplanes or in trucks and cars (although have you noticed there is often a spider tucked away in your side-view mirror?)

Spiders: you gotta love them – in natural systems, they are always close to you!

Spiders – they really are everywhere – even as sculpture.

References

Buddle, C. (2000). LIFE HISTORY OF PARDOSA MOESTA AND PARDOSA MACKENZIANA (ARANEAE, LYCOSIDAE) IN CENTRAL ALBERTA, CANADA Journal of Arachnology, 28 (3), 319-328 DOI: 10.1636/0161-8202(2000)028[0319:LHOPMA]2.0.CO;2

Kiss, B., and Samu, F (2000) Evaluation of population densities of the common wolf spider Pardosa agrestis (Araneae : Lycosidae) in Hungarian alfalfa fields using mark-recapture.  European Journal of Entomology 97(2) 191-195  Link

Turnbull, A. (1973). Ecology of the True Spiders (Araneomorphae) Annual Review of Entomology, 18 (1), 305-348 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.en.18.010173.001513

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Life History of Arctic Wolf Spiders: Part 1

For those of you who follow my blog, you will notice I’m somewhat obsessed with the Arctic – in part because of our large Northern Biodiversity Program, but also because it’s an ideal  system for studying the ecology of arthropods.    It also doesn’t hurt that the Arctic is a beautiful place to work!

The northern Yukon landscape: spider habitat

I am very excited to write about the latest paper published from our laboratory, titled Life history of tundra-dwelling wolf spiders (Araneae: Lycosidae) from the Yukon Territory, Canada.  This has just recently been published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, with Dr. Joseph Bowden as the lead author.  Dr. Bowden graduate from my laboratory just over a year ago, and is now living in California with his family.  Although the climate is somewhat warmer in California compared to the Yukon, he’s still actively working on research related to the biology of Arctic arthropods.   Dr. Bowden was a terrific student in my laboratory, and has already published some work about the community ecology of Arctic spiders: he has one paper in the journal Arctic and another in Ecoscience.

Dr. Joseph Bowden, working in the Yukon and ready for the biting flies!

In the CJZ paper, Joseph studied three species of tundra-dwelling  wolf spiders (family Lycosidae) and asked whether body size or condition better explained variation in fecundity and relative reproductive effort (defined as the ratio of female body mass to clutch mass).  He also tested whether  a trade-off exists between investment in offspring size and number.  The field work for this research was really enjoyable, as it involved collecting spiders by visual surveys and dry pitfall traps – after collection, Joseph set up a laboratory in a local campground shelter to do measurements on the species:

Dr. Joseph Bowden in a Northern “laboratory”

One of the main findings was that body size explained well the variation in offspring number.  Stated another way, larger female wolf spiders produced more eggs, a finding well supported in the literature.   A second main finding was that females with a lower condition allocated relatively more to offspring production than did females in better condition. This makes some sense – if the going is tough (i.e., poor condition), the females primary objective (from a fitness perspective) is to invest in offspring.  A third key finding was that  we found a negative relationships between egg size and number.    These trade-offs may in part be because of variation in resource availability at some of the study sites in the Yukon tundra.

An Arctic Pardosa (Lycosidae) female, with egg sac

Joseph also calculated tundra wolf spider densities.  Here’s the text of the CJZ paper that describes the methods (straightforward but time consuming):

Densities of the three focal species were estimated using a ring of hard plastic measuring 1.13 m in diameter (1 m x 1 m area) and about 12 cm high. The ring was haphazardly and firmly placed on the tundra surface in each site and all wolf spiders collected inside the ring were identified and counted. This protocol was adapted from Buddle (2000).

Results? Well… the most common species Pardosa  lapponica averaged about 0.4 spiders per square metre.  Some simple calculations will tell you just how common wolf spiders are on the Tundra:  4000 wolf spiders per hectare.  Don’t forget – wolf spiders are only part of the Arachno-fauna in the Arctic.  With confidence, this estimate of 4000 spiders per hectare represents a minimum.  There are a LOT of Arachnids living on the tundra!

In sum, this paper by Joseph is about studying some good old-fashioned natural history of a fascinating group of animals.  The methods are straightforward, but the findings are significant.  It’s pretty difficult to progress in ecology without a deep understanding of a species’ biology and life-history.  Life-history studies are the cornerstone of biology, and I’m thrilled that Joseph recognized that fact and did this research on Arctic wolf spiders.

    You will see that this post is titled Part 1:  some more work will hopefully be published soon – stay tuned for Part 2…

References

Bowden, J., & Buddle, C. (2012). Life history of tundra-dwelling wolf spiders (Araneae: Lycosidae) from the Yukon Territory, Canada Canadian Journal of Zoology, 90 (6), 714-721 DOI: 10.1139/z2012-038

Bowden, J., & Buddle, C. (2010). Determinants of Ground-Dwelling Spider Assemblages at a Regional Scale in the Yukon Territory, Canada Ecoscience, 17 (3), 287-297 DOI: 10.2980/17-3-3308

Buddle, C. (2000). LIFE HISTORY OF PARDOSA MOESTA AND PARDOSA MACKENZIANA (ARANEAE, LYCOSIDAE) IN CENTRAL ALBERTA, CANADA Journal of Arachnology, 28 (3), 319-328 DOI: 10.1636/0161-8202(2000)028[0319:LHOPMA]2.0.CO;2

Bowden, J. & Buddle, C. (2010). Spider assemblages across elevational and latitudinal gradients in the Yukon Territory, Canada.  Arctic 63(3): 261-272 http://arctic.synergiesprairies.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/article/view/1490

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Help Build an Arctic Food Web

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to attend a workshop about monitoring terrestrial arthropod biodiversity in the Arctic. In advance of that workshop, I offered to prepare a draft of a food-web that was ‘Arthropod-centric’.  There are many ways to build a food-web, and my first draft was focused on who eats whom.  In other words, an arrow depicting interactions would indicate predation (loosely defined).  An alternative would be to focus on energy moving through the system (i.e., the arrow would move ‘up’ from trophic level to trophic level, to indicate a transfer of energy).

Putting this together is a challenging, yet rewarding process.   I consulted with many of my colleagues with expertise in Arctic systems (including the folks involved with our Northern Biodiversity Program), and I am struggling to find the right balance between generality and specificity.  Here’s a portion of the (draft) food-web, showing some of the interactions:

Part of an Arctic Food Web, with an Arthropod Focus

When working on this food web, some interesting generalities are emerging: First, the overall dominance of Diptera (flies).  This is certainly because they do everything (e.g., decomposers, pollinators, blood-feeders) and they are very diverse.   Second,  arthropods are integrators - meaning they connect different processes, and they bridge different systems (aquatic/terrestrial).  Third,  highly valued vertebrates  (and humans!) depend on arthropods (and/or are affected by them).

Does all of this pique your interest?  Want to help? Together with colleagues, I am seeking help as this food-web develops.  Send me an e-mail or drop a comment on this post and think about some of these questions and provide some feedback if you are so inclined:

….what interactions do you think are important in the Arctic, from an arthropod perspective?

….how can the interactions between vertebrates and invertebrates best be depicted?

….what interactions between humans and arthropods need to be included? (other than biting flies – that one is pretty obvious!)

….what ecological processes should be included in an Arctic food-web? 

There are other Arctic food-webs out there.   The Bear Island food-web is probably the best one that focuses on Arctic arthropods.  If you’ve not seen it, the paper by Ian Hodkinson and Stephen Coulson (2004) is worth a look.   That food-web is more specific than the one I am working on (it should be since it’s focused on a specific location and it can be because a lot of research has occurred there!).   I really like one of the last sentences in their paper: ...the Svalbard high Arctic terrestrial food web is far more complex than has previously been appreciated but further sections remain to be resolved.  Indeed!  I would argue that we need to develop these kind of specific food-webs from other locations in the Arctic, but to get there, we also need a general, broad overview that encapsulates the overall role and importance of Arthropods to the Arctic.  Hence the development of a general food web.

I’ll finish with some thoughts about using this blog as a platform for generating and refining ideas about this food web.  Last year I had a long discussion with my PhD student Crystal Ernst (aka the Bug Geek) about the use of social media in the creative thinking process.   Some parts of the discussion we had showed up in one of her posts about the role of social media in science.  There’s a nice quote in that post that really hits the nail on the head:

Social media is just another kind of “hallway talk…in a really, really, long hallway”. (Crystal attributes part of that quote to another fine blogger, Bug Girl)

Social media can be used effectively as a platform for soliciting feedback and generating ideas about science, including specific projects such as building a food-web diagram.   At this stage, I admit that I’m not ready to put the entire draft food-web in this post – it’s far too incomplete.  However, it is the perfect time to ask for help, and solicit ideas.

….I welcome your feedback.

Reference

D. Hodkinson, I., & J. Coulson, S. (2004). Are high Arctic terrestrial food chains really that simple? – The Bear Island food web revisited Oikos, 106 (2), 427-431 DOI: 10.1111/j.0030-1299.2004.13091.x

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Teaching Tips: Grade-less assignments, postcards and tickets

Earlier this week, McGill University had the pleasure of hosting Prof. Graham Scott, from Hull University in the UK. He is passionate about the learning process and he brought his expertise and knowledge to a workshop at Macdonald Campus (made possible by the Macdonald Innovations for Teaching Improvement program).  The workshop covered many topics including student managed learning,  how to facilitate autonomy in students, how field courses benefit the educational experience for undergraduate students, and various other teaching strategies.   Some great teaching tips also emerged from the workshop,  and I want to share a few of them here.  (Note: a longer post about the value field courses will come sometime in the future!).

Grade-less assignments:

This is a strategy I sometimes use in my own courses.  Although all class assignments should have value and link to the Learning Objectives for a course, not all assignments should be graded.  Grade-less assignments can allow for alternative approaches to discovering course content and assessing skills, and they can bring out creativity from students.  For example, a few years ago I asked groups of students to prepare a “map” of a field-day to a local field site (Mont. St Hilaire).  The objective of this exercise was to think about ways to depict multi-variate data (as part of that field trip, students gathered many types of information, including observations about plants and animals, discussions about ecosystems, the geological history of the field site, and more).  I did a lecture on ways to think about creative data presentation (using Napoleon’s March as inspiration)  and in groups, the students were asked to map their field trip.  There was no grade associated with this assignment, yet the groups produced the most amazing projections.  I was absolutely stunned and thrilled at the creativity, hard work, skill, and attention to detail.  Here’s one example:

The Map Project: one group’s depiction of their field trip to Mont St Hilaire

The students told me that because there was no grade associated with the assignment, they were able to have fun, be creative, and explore alternatives without the risk of doing poorly and/or not meeting the instructor’s expectations. They were also able to use their other personal skills (e.g., artistic abilities, graphic design training) and they welcomed that opportunity.   What was the incentive?  The groups were asked to present to the rest of the class, so there was motivation to do well in front of peers.  The other motivating factor was that the students were presented with a challenge, and the challenge was linked directly to the learning objectives of the course.  Finally, the groups themselves motivated each other and found value in the assignment beyond the grade. The bottom line is that under some circumstances, grade-less assignments can be an effective teaching tool, and can bring out the very best in students.

Postcard exercise:

In the workshop earlier this week, Graham Scott assembled us into groups, and each individual in a group was asked to write down, on an index card (i.e., the “postcard”), one thing that we thought would help to improve our teaching ability. We did not include our name on this card.  The index cards were then traded around the entire room, so each group ended up with a new set of postcards from other individuals.  We were then asked to discuss the content of those cards, and rank them in terms of what we viewed as the best ideas on the cards.  Because the content was anonymous, we were able to have an open and frank discussion.  Each group then presented their results to the rest of the room.  This exercise allowed individuals to put down their ideas honestly, and truthful.  What was amazing is that there was an incredible convergence of ideas, and what emerged was ‘clusters’ of ways to improve teaching.

An example ‘postcard’ from our exercise about ways to improve teaching. Student-led learning is key.

This small exercise was a very effective way to promote engagement, discussion, and allowed participants to be open and frank with the comfort of anonymity.   I can see this working very well with any kind of course.  As an example, I can envision ways to incorporate this exercise into a lecture about Animal Diversity – students could be asked to write down what taxon they think are the most diverse, globally, and then the cards could be shared around.  Groups could then be formed and students could group cards into categories (e..g, taxonomic, functional, body size) and this could initiate a discussion about mechanisms behind patterns of global diversity.  Best of all, everyone would be involved, and all ideas could be discussed.  This is “student led” learning – and will help to reduce the biases that an instructor imposes on content.  The postcard exercise is simple, cheap, effective, fun, and something I will use next year.

Ticket to enter:

This was an idea raised by one of the workshop participants, and one that Graham Scott had not heard of before (this shows just how important it is to get together and talk about teaching!).  Although this exercise was presented as something to be used in a graduate-level course, I think it could work at almost any level of University, and for almost any type of course.   Here, before entering a classroom (or before starting lecture, etc) students must write down a “question” related to the course or relevant content.   (Note:  I must be honest that where the exercise goes from here is different than what was formalized at the workshop – I am taking some liberties to muse about variations on the theme)

The questions  can be used in various ways: 1) they could be read out at the start and the lecture could be guided towards the content related to the questions, 2) students could read their own question and be asked to justify why that question is relevant and applicable to the course, 3) at the end of the class, the instructor and students could discuss the questions and see to what degree they were or were not answered, 4) the questions themselves could form a starting point for discussion at the start of class, on that day, or perhaps during the next time the group meets, 5) the questions could be used to form groups which in turn could facilitate a process or project related to researching the questions, 6) the questions could be used to modify the course and its learning objectives in the future….  And I think there are many other options once the questions are in hand.

It’s a ticket to enter because the class won’t start until the students have asked their question.   The benefit to this approach is that it helps engage students in the areas of their own interest as related to the course.  It also helps to see whether there is a match (or mismatch) between the instructor and the students, and questions are an insightful and powerful way to do this.  Good questions are also something critical to the research process yet we do not often focus on how to ask good questions as a core competency at University.  Asking good questions is fundamental to the learning process.

In sum, the workshop was inspiring, informative, and Graham Scott helped us see some wonderful innovative and important ways to rethink and retool approaches to teaching.  There are many more tips and ideas to share, so please stay-tuned for more to come in future posts….

What are your top teaching tips?  Please share!

Opening an ecological black box: entomopathogenic fungi in the Arctic

While visiting Alaska last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Niels M. Schmidt.  He is a community ecologist (from Aarhus University, Denmark), who studies Arctic sytems and he is one of the key people behind the Zackenberg Research Station in Greenland.   He told me about one of his recently published papers (authored by Nicolai V. Meyling, Niels M. Schmidt, and Jørgen Eilenberg) titled “Occurrence and diversity of fungal entomopathogens in soils of low and high Arctic Greenland” (published in Polar Biology).

An ecological black box: the tundra

By definition (from Wikipediaentomopathogenic fungi act as parasites of insects – these fungi can kill, or seriously disable insects.  I was amazed at this paper because I have never given much thought to fungal entomopathogens in the Arctic (despite knowing their prevalence in other ecosystems).    Could these fungi be ecologically important in Arctic?  I think Arctic community ecology has been seriously understudied, and we know little about what drives the relative abundance of species.  From an arthropod perspective, we know that some birds depend  on Arthropods for food (e.g. see Holmes 1966), and that flies are important nuisance pests to large mammals (e.g., Witter et al. 2012), but I would argue that most ecological interactions in the Arctic involving arthropods (and their relative importance) remain a mystery.   I could not even speculate on the role of fungal entomopathogens in the Arctic.  This is one of those feared ‘black boxes in ecology’:  probably there, possibly important, likely complex, but knowledge is seriously lacking. 

So along comes this paper: Meyling et al.  took soil samples from locations in the high and low Arctic (i.e., including Zackenberg, at about 74.5 degrees N), and they returned the samples to their laboratory in Denmark.   In their lab, the authors allowed live insects (using Lepidoptera [Pyralidae)] and Coleoptera [Tenebrionidae]) to be exposed to their samples, and they checked regularly for mortality: “...cadavers were rinsed in water, incubated in moist containers and monitored for the emergence of fungi“.  Any fungi that emerged from the (dead) host were identified.

The results: they identified five species of fungal entomopathogens (all in the division Ascomycota).  As the authors state in the start of their discussion “This study is the first to document fungal entomopathogens in soils from Greenland at both low and high Arctic sites. Furthermore, the use of in vivo isolation with living insect baits explicitly documented pathogenicity to these insects.”

Could this Arctic Weevil die from a fungal infection?

The black box has been opened:  indeed, fungal entomopathogens are in the high and low Arctic of Greenland, and are therefore likely in the high and low Arctic around the globe.  These fungi probably play a role in arthropod mortality in these systems, but this remains completely understudied.  As the authors point out, given the tight relationship between fungi and temperature, what effect could a changing climate have on these fungal entomopathogens?   This is potentially very important, as increased mortality of insects by fungi could trickle all the way up the food web…  I think we need to get more mycologists into the Arctic, and we must work to properly articulate high Arctic food webs with all the black boxes opened wide. 

References:

Holmes, R. (1966). Feeding Ecology of the Red-Backed Sandpiper (Calidris Alpina) in Arctic Alaska Ecology, 47 (1) DOI: 10.2307/1935742

Meyling, N., Schmidt, N., & Eilenberg, J. (2012). Occurrence and diversity of fungal entomopathogens in soils of low and high Arctic Greenland Polar Biology DOI: 10.1007/s00300-012-1183-6

Witter, L., Johnson, C., Croft, B., Gunn, A., & Gillingham, M. (2012). Behavioural trade-offs in response to external stimuli: time allocation of an Arctic ungulate during varying intensities of harassment by parasitic flies Journal of Animal Ecology, 81 (1), 284-295 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01905.x

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