National Taiwan University Scientist in Antarctica To Study Endemic Bug

TaiwanPlus News

National Taiwan University associate professor of entomology Matan Shelomi is in Antarctica studying an endemic flightless insect species. At about half a centimeter long, the Belgica Antarctica is the largest fully terrestrial species native to the continent. Scientists like Shelomi are interested in how it can survive Antarctica's freezing cold.

Transcript

00:00Could you tell me more about the insect species you're studying in Antarctica?

00:03What are you trying to find out about it? Even though Antarctica is so huge, there's only really one

00:08insect that's native to like the continent itself and not also found on some of the other islands.

00:15And it's a tiny little fly with no wings, so it can't even fly,

00:19called Belgica antarctica. They're only about maybe a millimeter thick and

00:25half a centimeter long when they are at maximum size. That's the larva. The adults are even tinier.

00:30Nonetheless, they are technically the largest terrestrial animal in Antarctica because they can't swim, unlike the penguin.

00:37Now, so one thing I'm here to do is to try to figure out a little bit more about how it's able to survive

00:42the cold. My hypothesis is that it might have some relationship with ice-nucleating bacteria.

00:47Now, those are bacteria which will affect the freezing point of water.

00:51We actually use one of these bacteria to make artificial snow. You mix the bacteria with water and the water will freeze at a

00:57relatively warm temperature.

00:59So I've been down here looking for these little larvae,

01:03dissecting them, plating the gut microbes, growing the microbes, and seeing can any of them nucleate ice.

01:08What is the broader significance of this type of research in Antarctica?

01:12And what do you plan to bring back from this trip? These ice-nucleating microbes could be used to control insects in colder temperatures.

01:19If you expose insects to these bacteria, they will freeze at a higher temperature. So if you have something that lives

01:26in the relatively cold climate and you want it to die, you make it freeze a little bit sooner. Or you could use this on

01:32food or rice or whatever that you're storing at a cold temperature. Add ice-nucleating bacteria and things will freeze sooner.

01:40I am planning to bring back some of the microbe samples and hopefully

01:45describe them, learn more about them, name them. If they're a new species, who knows? We don't know what we might find.

01:52I'll bring back DNA samples just so we can get a full picture of the microbiome.

01:56What about Antarctica makes it so important for scientific research? There's a lot about

02:02Antarctica that's really important.

02:05A lot of our research on climate change comes here and Antarctica is experiencing climate change a lot more strongly than

02:12other parts of the world. So I think the global climate average has risen by like 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is already bad.

02:20Here in the peninsula, it's gone up by about 4 degrees Celsius in the same amount of time.

02:24So the global average actually means it's a lot higher here in the poles and it's had a really serious effect on life here.

02:31Consider the base that I'm in. Humans have been on this base for decades and they can see major changes.

02:39Penguins are one example.

02:41The island where I'm on now used to have very few penguins.

02:45Then it had a bunch of Adelie penguins, which like relatively cold climates. And right now there's about 6,000 Gentoo penguins

02:52on this little island. They're really cute, but they shouldn't be here. This is supposed to be too cold for the Gentoo penguin.

02:59They're not supposed to get this far south and yet they are everywhere.

03:04So Antarctica is a really good example of climate change in action.

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