Latest News

Summer 2016 campaigns

Posted on 16.6.2016 by

  • Zackenberg, Northeast Greenland – Tomas Roslin and colleagues will be working at Zackenberg as usual, from the first days of June to August. There will be a mixed set of people coming and going (Tuomas Kankaanpää, Bernhard Eitzinger, Tea Huotari, Mikko Tiusanen, Elisabet Ottosson, and Riikka Kaartinen with her team from the UK). In particular, we will be focusing on spatial variation in interaction network structure along elevational and phenological gradients, with a special emphasis on
    plant-pollinator, plant-herbivore and predator-prey interactions. They will be working towards the Panarctic Parasitoid Project.
  • Station Nord, North Greenland – Oskar Hansen and Tobias Sandfeld from Aarhus University (AU), Denmark will sample arthropods with pitfall and malaise traps in this location in the far north and collect samples of Nysius groenlandicus for lab experiments Disko Island, West Greenland – Toke Høye, Kristian Jakobsen and Jean-Claude Kresse (AU) will do a screening project possibly leading to a new monitoring program for arthropods within the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring programme.
  • Narsarsuaq, South Greenland – Toke Høye, Mathias Skytte, Thøger Henriksen, Maja Møholt (AU) will continue monitoring arthropods in permanent plots in combination with targeted projects on mosquitos, wolf spiders and herbivorous insects. Brent Sinclair and Susan Anthony will visit from Western University, Canada to study cold tolerance in wolf spiders at the same site.
  • Yukon – Shaun Turney (PhD student with Chris Buddle) will be at Tombstone Park in the Yukon Territory to do some experimental work on the effects of spider predators on the mesofauna living in the tundra. He will also be doing feeding trials to try to assess and quantify what spiders are eating in sub-Arctic habitats. This work will be part of Shaun’s PhD on the structure of arthropod-based food webs in the Yukon.
  • Cambridge Bay, Nunavut – Ecological monitoring of arthropods will be continuing in Cambridge Bay, headed by researchers at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station: this will be the third year of monitoring in that area. Former McGill MSc student Elyssa Cameron will be playing a role in overseeing that monitoring project.
  • Alaska – Amanda Koltz will be travelling to Toolik, Alaska to plan the implementation of an arthropod monitoring program as part of the Arctic LTER.

Time to grab the big picture

 

Posted on 20.1.2016 by

No team can work across the entire Arctic. But maybe we do not need to, either? By breaking up bigger tasks into ‘distributed experiments’, we can achieve almost anything: By conducting the same, short protocol at as many sites as possible, we can get a grip on bigger patterns, without a major loss of time and effort for anyone. Thus, by working together, we can accomplish what our network was founded to do: answering important questions in polar ecology at a scale inaccessible to any single research group.

With this objective in mind, it is time to join forces – this time to quantify the food webs regulating insect herbivores across the Arctic. What we hope to achieve is a description of how food webs of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) and their natural enemies (parasitoid wasps and flies) vary across the Arctic – and how this reflects into a key ecosystem service: flower damage on avens (Dryas).

The sampling routine will require no more than a few hours of work during 2 (or 3) days, spaced about a week apart.

We hope that all NeAT members will join our initiative. Together, we expect to have fun implementing the new project – and to again do important science.

For more information on the project (including how to sign up), please click here. Then keep watching these web pages as we add material and specific instructions during the winter.

Best wishes,
Tuomas Kankaanpää & Tomas Roslin

Summer 2015 Campaigns

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Posted on 2.10.2015 by

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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.

Help Create an Invertebrate Herbivory Protocol

<header>Posted on 9.7.2015 by

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Want to take part in a study that aims for development of a standardized protocol to measure invertebrate herbivory in the tundra?

To recommend robust sampling protocols to measure invertebrate herbivory in tundra we first need  to understand some basic things. For example, what are the average levels of herbivory? At what spatial scale does it vary? To try to address these questions we are calling for participants to contribute to a study to be conducted in summer 2015. The goal of this study is to assess the occurrence and intensity of invertebrate herbivory at different tundra sites. If interested, please visit The Herbivory Network website for instructions!

Welcome to the NeAT Website!

Posted on 16.4.2015 by

This academic network on terrestrial and freshwater arthropods of Arctic, Antarctic and alpine regions brings together entomologists from research institutions around the world. The goal of NeAT is to advance communication, collaboration and knowledge about tundra arthropods.

If you have any questions about the network, you can send us a message using the contact form. If you wish to join the network, you can fill out the questionnaire! To see a list of our members, please see our members page.

1st meeting NeAT

 

Posted on 15.6.2016 by

Date: Tue 15 Nov — Thu 17 Nov

Time: 08:00  —  17:00

Location: AIAS, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 6B, bygning 1632

The Network for Arthropods of the Tundra (NeAT) is working towards increased international collaboration on topics related to arthropods in alpine and polar environments. Arthropods are highly sensitive to environmental change and arctic and alpine environments are changing rapidly as a consequence of global warming. It is therefore more relevant than ever to unite efforts and study tundra arthropods.

We are very happy to invite you to join the 1st NeAT meeting at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. This meeting will present the latest topical research and provide a venue for informal interaction among researchers across the world.

More information about the conference: Toke T Høye

Network for Arthropods of the Tundra 1st meeting, 15-16 November, 2016

Location: Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 6B, building 1632 Aarhus, Denmark.

See the program here.

 

The registration form for the 1st NeAT meeting at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark on 15.-16. November 2016.

The deadline for registration and abstract submission is 1 September 2016. Please register even if you have been in contact earlier.

The registration form is available here:

https://goo.gl/forms/SXQdQDziHQBWkzCD3

We are very happy to announce, that the meeting itself will be free-of-charge. We will even be able to offer a free conference dinner on 16 November. However, participants are asked to arrange their own accommodation (see suggestions in the form) and travel to Aarhus.

We are working on organizing a special issue of Polar Biology for contributions from NeAT. Please get in contact as soon as possible if you are interested in contributing.

I hope to see many of you in Aarhus in November!

Best wishes,

Toke

More information about the conference: Toke T Høye