An Investigation. Part 1: Who are you?

It’s the dead of night. An investigator is working in the lab, trying to answer one simple question, one question that begins all good investigations: Who are you?

She examines the body, which has three bright white lights shining on it. The body is hairier than expected. The key, she thinks, is the unusual indentations on the side of his abdomen.

After taking notes and doing a final once-over, the investigator knows who this guy is. She feels like cueing some tv crime show theme song. Maybe the one from Bones, where scientists help solve an FBI case.

After a careful examination of the body, an identification was possible.

But the dead-of-night investigator isn’t done yet. She has 194 bodies to go. The ultimate goal is to create a network – like the kind you see on those tv crime shows. Who’s connected to whom? What were their usual hang-outs?

Making a network helps an investigator figure out who’s connected to whom and what their usual hang-outs were. Credit:cityTV

The guy she just identified might have had a thing for hanging out at buttercups. Or maybe he visited gray willow, like many of the other guys and girls. The guy’s a fly.

Identifying fly specimens is a daunting task. She progresses to the next fly, and starts the process all over again. Antenna shape. Wing veins. Leg spikes. Hairs on the middle of the body near the legs. So many characters to pour over. So many possible identities. Each identification is helping to uncover the network, which will help us understand the importance of pollinators in Greenland.

A fly being identified under the microscope.

The pollen that was previously collected off the fly’s body will give the investigator insight into the fly’s hang outs –  flowers they were visiting.  Stay tuned as we collect these clues .

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Debra the Delicate Dendrite: Communicating my research at a recent Science Pub

Last week, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to share some of my recent research at a Science Pub in Lebanon, NH. The idea behind these Science Pubs is pretty simple: have a few scientists come to a local pub to have an informal conversation with community members about the research they do and how it might be relevant to our lives. This Science Pub was titled “Climate Change: Bringing it Home,” and it featured Professor Richard Howarth from Environmental Sciences Department to discuss ecological economics, Postdoc David Lutz from the Environmental Sciences Department to discuss forest ecology and albedo, and I was there to represent the snow albedo aspects of our research through the EPSCoR “Ecosystems and Society” project. We discussed the value of carbon sequestration in our New Hampshire forests versus the value of the high albedo of open landscapes in wintertime because of the reflectivity of snow. The discussion then moved into the effects of climate change on our local forests and what changes we might expect to see in snowfall and ecosystem services (from flood prevention to maple syrup production)!

My role in the discussion was to talk about my research in snow albedo, studying the effects of grain size and impurities on snow reflectivity in New Hampshire and Greenland (see Ruth’s post about albedo in Greenland this past summer). Thanks to the inspiration of fellow IGERTeer, Gifford Wong, I came up with a story to help convey my research to the audience. The story was of Debra the Delicate Dendrite and her struggles against enemies Black Carbon and Heat! I was surprised by how well it went over and by how much more fun it was for the audience and for me when I discussed my research from the prospective of a protagonist who faces struggles, like any good character in a story! Stay tuned for a full post about Debra’s story sometime soon!

And in the meantime, check out the schedule for upcoming Science Pubs here!

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Interdisciplinary Action of the Day

A cool thing about being part of an interdisciplinary group focused on understanding Polar Environmental Change is that everyone knows I am studying Arctic mosquitoes, so when the ethnobotanist/linguist pulls out an obscure text on lifestyles and languages of the Iglulik Eskimos, they can alert me to scientifically informative passages, such as “Of the lower animal world may be mentioned the mosquito which, in the short summer – from the middle of July to the middle of August – can make life in the open air a torment. The low, swampy land on Southampton Island is said to be particularly bad in this respect; there are fewest mosquitos [sic] in Cockburn Land, although at certain places, for instance round the trading station at Ponds Inlet, they can be extremely annoying.” Therkel Mathiassen, in Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos, a report from the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924

Although brief, it’s relevant to what I am studying- the distribution, abundance, and phenology of mosquitoes in the Arctic. I suspect that the humanities literature, especially accounts from historical expeditions, is full of useful references and tidbits of scientific information. Without interdisciplinary collaboration, much of this information would remain elusive.

IGERT POWER. And thanks, Simone.

[Aedes nigripes posing for a photo in front of the Greenland Ice Sheet.]

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