Peter Convey

Sitting here in an increasingly sunny Cambridge, it is easy to be an entomologist! Our (well, our friends’) bees are up early and foraging, moths are starting to appear in recent numbers in my small moth trap, and those friendly mosquitoes from the nearby fen are obviously hungry… But, when I say I’m an entomologist in Antarctica, the most usual reaction is blank looks! ‘Bugs don’t live in the ice, do they??’ most will say and, strictly, they are right – just like here, the bugs that are around live on the small part of Antarctica that is free of ice and snow, at least in the summer. Even then, most of the larger insects we are familiar with here don’t make it ’south. But, if you look closely, there are plenty to be found – you have to look in the soil and simple vegetation and, if you do, you find a thriving community of springtails, mites, and smaller invertebrates, the largest maybe a millimetre or so in length. So what, I hear you say….well, just like here in the UK, these things are actually the drivers of the soil ecosystem, and are central in reprocessing the dead material that comes into the soil, and releasing their nutrients so they can be used again. Take them away, here or there, and the overall ecosystem will have serious trouble functioning. [/caption]

The picture here (click it to see the full-size version) is of the common Antarctic springtail Cryptopygus antarcticus (they don’t have english names!) – there are several thousand here trapped on a small pool of water on some moss. This tells you they can be very common – I’ve occasionally found densities of more than a million per square metre, more typically tens to hundreds of thousands – that is at least as many as you will find in your garden! There is one other obvious difference though – in our Antarctic habitats we find maybe two species at once, and only twenty or so across the entire continent….in your garden you will probably find several hundred!!