Ruud Kleinpaste: The climate, insects, and animals in Arctic regions

Jacob Anderson is an old mate from Sir Peter Blake Trust (Blake Inspire), who’s finally got his PhD and moved to the USA, taking up a job working on Climate Change. 

These observations are about the effect of climate change and how critters adapt to the cold. 

 

The Greenland wolf 

The Greenland wolf is a subspecies of the grey wolf, and their population is sitting at around 200. Their range is in the ice-free areas of northeast Greenland. Their main prey are hares, but they also eat the calves of musk oxen and seals. 

In the late early 1900’s a population in east Greenland was poisoned to extinction. But they were not considered high economic value due to their low abundance, compared to the fur trade of the Arctic fox. 

They have small pack sizes – usually only 3 or 4 members. 

Greenland wolf spoor. 

 

Arctic mosquito  

Arctic mosquitoes serve as an important food source to other animals. They are notorious for their role as pests to humans and wildlife, including caribou, whose populations can be affected by their attacks. They primarily feed on the blood of caribou. 

These mosquitoes spend most of their lives in an aquatic environment in shallow, tundra ponds. Their eggs become frozen in the winter and hatch into larvae when the ponds melt in the spring. Arctic mosquitoes spend about two to three weeks in the larval stage before they develop into pupa and then adults. 

They're most prevalent after a hatch, with the mosquito population spiking late June through July, and again, briefly, at the beginning of August. They can't fly in a light breeze. In fact, we only really had them annoy us for a warm (above freezing) day with no wind. The rest of the time we didn’t see them or have any land on us. 

As temperatures warm in the Arctic, mosquitoes emerge earlier, grow faster, and survive as winged pests even longer. 

Aedes Mosquito Hatching. Photo / Jacob Anderson   

My observations came from Alaska. 

 

Nosebot Maggots 

Caribou not only feed mosquitoes, but they also feed huge maggots of the Nosebot Fly (also known as Nasal Fly or caribou warble fly). These maggots are rather large and gain access into the caribou’s nostrils when their mum literally hovers near the caribou and sprays her babies into that nice, cosy nose environment (This adult fly does not lay eggs! Skipping that life-stage saves time for the life cycle). 

“Heavily infested caribou may be tormented by the irritating presence of the parasites and be thinner than other caribou, but the caribou meat is still OK to eat”, according to caribou hunters.

 

The frozen Woodfrog (Rana silvestris) 

Here is an arctic creature that knows how to over-winter (-20 degrees). This frog simply freezes in the winter cold but manages to restrict the damage inside the body cells by increasing the amount of sugars inside the cells. Crystals in-between the cells allow the ice to form where the damage is very minimal. 

When the frog thaws, it slowly gathers enough warmth to move on with its life – no doubt mumbling to itself ”That was a heavy frost!!”  

(It reminds me of our unique mountain stone weta). 

 

Ice worms on the glaciers in Alaska 

These species only live in Alaska and are a relic of the old ice-ages. 

Small, dark worms (2 cm long) that live and crawl in the icy glaciers, their food is algae and pollen, as well as certain invertebrates that land on the glacier (I’ve seen small moths being “pushed-up” by weather conditions at lower elevations). 

The worms simply clean up the glacier’s surfaces. 

They can live in temperatures below zero, but will die when the temperatures go higher than +4.4 degrees centigrade. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at b Well.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
We are doing things a little bit differently this Saturday morning.
It's usually this time every week that we catch up
with our man in the Garden Root Climb past. And
we're still catching up with our man in the Garden
Roote Clime past, but this morning he has brought company
Kilder Root and Jacob Anderson PhD. How are you doing good?

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Hi Jack, Nice to hear from you.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, you too, Thank you so much for being with us.
So we're just going to explain things here so everyone
understands where we're going rude. We want to have a
talk this morning about some of the insects and animals
that can survive in freezing conditions. And Jacob is an
old mate of yours from the Sir Peter Black Trust
who's got us PhD and is now research scientist at

(00:55):
the Lamont Dohity Earth Observatory. And it is fascinating to consider,
even with a warming planet, the impacts of climate change
on those animals who live in the coldest parts of
our worlds. So I'm going to run through a few
different species and gents I'm going to get you to
explain how these animals were able to thrive in such
harsh conditions. So let's start off with the Greenland wolf.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah. Well, we just came back from Greenland last month.
We were doing field work unrelated to the Greenland wolf,
but we happened to find these footprints as we were
going to the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, and
then as we kind of walked up a little bit further,
we then saw this Greenland wolf, which is the subspecies

(01:38):
of the gray wolf. Their population is only about two hundred,
so very very rare. And what's really interesting is because
the area that we were working in is so remote,
there's actually not a lot of understanding about their range
and their population, but they're only really situated in that
northern and northeastern part of Greenland. There used to be

(02:01):
a species in Eastern Greenland, but in the early nineteen
hundreds there was obviously a roaring fur trade. They didn't
have the same economic value as the Arctic fox, but
they basically poisoned them to extinction in East Greenland.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Oh man, that's such a shame. Yeah, but extraordinary that
you're able to see one, Jacob, I mean that's quite remarkable. Yeah,
are they beautiful? How do they kind of look so?

Speaker 3 (02:26):
So? I mean I didn't really know what to expect,
to be honest, and none of us are kind of
really looking for it. It just kind of found us. Really.
We were really in a really remote place, far from
the coast, so we weren't expecting to see anything. But
I would say there were smaller wolf, not that they've
spent a huge amount of time with wolves, but definitely

(02:49):
they're pretty scarce on food up there, so they're not
they're not as big as some of their cousins.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, the snake species almost sounds like an oxy moron
because most of us think that mosquitoes only thrive and
warm tropical places. Tell us about the Arctic mosquito.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yes, yes, so did I Until a month ago as well,
I couldn't believe it. We were at about eighty one
degrees north latitude and the one day it got above freezing,
mosquitoes all just kind of came out of nowhere and
started biting us and feeding feeding on us. And usually

(03:26):
they're they're looking for caribou or reindeer and getting blood
from them. But I guess some scientists had to do
when we showed up. But they actually they actually caused
a lot of strife for the cariboo. But crazy species.
They're basically frozen as eggs and these small ponds over

(03:46):
the winter and then for a few summer months they
hatch and then look for whatever they can to find blood.
But yeah, they annoyed us for one day, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, that's incredible. Heye, nose bottom maggots. There's something else
you want to avoid?

Speaker 4 (04:02):
Yeah, I think so, because these are the things that
you find in caribous well, so there's a lot of
insects actually in that I mean, I've seen my stuff
from Alaska, not from Greenland. So this is why I
asked Jacob Jacob to come and have a chat about
this as well. The nosebot maggot, also known as the
carribou warbler flies, are huge maggots that are not that

(04:27):
basically spent their life cycle in the nostrils of a caribou. Unbelievable,
So in that cold place, they have to go inside
the nostrils of these curriboo in order to survive. But
what I really enjoyed was a little quote from some
caribou hunters that says, heavily infested carribou, maybe tormented by

(04:48):
the irritating presence of those parasites. And they might be
thinner than other cariboos, but the caribou meat is still
okay to eat. I was wonderful that.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
They delighted you. And what delighted me, rude, is seeing
the photograph of you holding those maggots up to your
own face. It's just the context site.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well it shows you how big these
bums are.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, it's amazing they are. They're kind of like the
size of an almond or something like that, don't.

Speaker 4 (05:15):
They exactly exactly? And this is the point too, that
these particular megas have adapted to living there, and so
has the frog that around our silvests, the frozen frog
in Alaska that can stand or minus twenty degrees or
freezes solid, solidly frozen, yeah, and then thaws out in spring,

(05:37):
going like bug that was heavy, heavy winter, you know
what I mean. That's sort of feeling you get. And
they walk off as if nothing happened. And there are
even creatures in New Zealand that do that. We've got
an a mountain stone weather that lives in our mountains
in the rock and billers for instance, that can withstand,
and there's eleven and does exactly the same thing. It

(05:58):
is unbelievable how these insects can do that.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
So they're basically cryogenically freezing themselves in winter, yeah, just
frozen solid. And then once the with the warms up
a little bit, they're able to de ice if you like.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yes, that's exactly.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
And they do that by putting more sugar into their
cells and crystals between the cells so that the shells
themselves don't get damage. It's quite an interesting.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well, if there's one thing I know how to do,
it's putting more sugar into my cell. So yeah, very good.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
Now. And ice on the glaciers, yeah, that is the
thing that only occurs in Alaska. And here comes the thing.
It can stand minus ten degrees, no problem, and it
can stand up to four point four degrees above zero.
But if it gets higher than that, they die. And
these are amazing little worms tentimeters long, and they're the

(06:47):
cleaner uppers off the glaciers and they basically clean up
all the stuff they've got it, from pollen to algae
to even creatures that fly up glaciers like moths and
I've seen them do that and it's unbelievable. But there
you go. I mean it's Jacob who does the climate
change research. There are so many that are endangered as

(07:07):
a result of warmer temperatures in the Arctic.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, hey, thank you so much, guys. Jacob. I've got
to say, I mean we've sort of known each other
for a wee while. Now Jacob has the world's most
enviable Instagram account. If you're looking for someone to be
posting amazing photos of science being done in extraordinary parts
of the world, Jacob, you have the best Instagram account going.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
I reckon, Thank you, Jack. I was going to say
as well, just on Route's comment about the ice worms,
this is really interesting too. As the surfaces of the
ice get darker, so if there's more dark things like
animals or algae or palms, of course the albedo effect
or the ability to reflect changes and so the heat

(07:51):
gets absorbed rather than reflected, which of course causes more
melt as well. So as we see more of these
dark things on the ice surfaces, and we also start
to see more melt.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, well that's amazing. Hey, thank you so much, guys.
That is really interesting. We're gonna put photographs of all
of those different species up on the website so you
can go and have a look at home, including that
photo of Rude holding the maggots up to his face.
Probably not for the first time in his life, let's
be honest, knowing Rude. Jacob Anderson, PhD and Rude Climb
pass with us there.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.