Bee Bowls
Yesterday we completed an insect survey that we began the day before. Two days ago we set out bee bowls at ten different sites on the tundra. The sites ranged from near camp (20 miles from the ice sheet) to very near the ice. At each site, we placed 24 small, plastic bowls, eight each of blue, yellow, and white (in that order). Each bowl contained some soapy water. You have probably observed that some insects can walk on water because water has surface tension; the water molecules are attracted to one another. Adding a little bit of detergent (surfactant) breaks that tension, and the insects fall in. In this way, we can collect insects and determine what sorts of insects live in each condition.
Bee bowl containing some trapped insects, mostly flies.
That's me carefully emptying a bee bowl and water into a small funnel sieve before bagging the insects collected.
Today we went to each of the ten sites to observe our results. We counted the insects according to the color of the bowl we found them in and then collected them for identification back in Christine's lab. This occupied our entire afternoon and evening. We found that the afternoon breeze off the ice sheet was a strong, whipping wind that threatened to carry all our work away with it. It was really cold! Can my former meteorology students tell me:
Questions:
1) Why this wind comes from the east?
2) Why this wind comes from the ice during the late afternoon?
We also found that our musk ox of yesterday was not in the same spot today. Musk oxen are very large animals and have lived in the Arctic since the Ice Age (even though most other very large Ice Age animals like mammoths and North American rhinos have become extinct). Apparently, musk oxen prefer to be uphill from animals that make them uncomfortable, like us. Yesterday we were the ones who were uphill, so we felt it was a safe idea to find a new spot for the bee bowls. Today when we peaked into that valley, our musk ox was not there, so we could take our time and work carefully. I have not gotten a good picture yet of musk oxen, caribou, or Arctic hares, but I'll keep working on it! (I haven't seen an Arctic fox nor a sea eagle yet.) My initial observations of the bee bowls include the following:
There were no bees in them!
There were mostly flies as well as some mosquitoes.
There were "houseflies" (the kind you are probably thinking of) and crane flies.
The insects seemed to prefer the white and yellow blues over blue.
Back in the lab, these insects will be preserved with some ethanol for identification later in the year.
These bags are labeled for the site and date where they were collected.
Answers:
1) The wind belt this far north is the polar easterly.
2) Air over warming soil and rock rises because it has less air pressure than cold air. The air over the ice sheet is colder because the ice reflects most of the sun's energy. So this cold air blows into the area where the warm air is rising.
Flag of the Day!
Sean's pollinators flag.
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