The Arthropods

I knew when I signed up for this that there would be midges involved, but nobody mentioned anything about spiders.  I have a limit on 6 legs on bugs.  Anything with more legs than that is a freak of nature and probably out to get me.  I'd seen plenty of insects yesterday morning while we were burying resin bags - little pouches full of beads which measure the nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil - when I got my first black fly in the eye, followed quickly by snorting my first black fly and then by swallowing my first midge.  There'd been a rumor that the undergrads would have the afternoon off while the grad students worked on old data analysis and papers so I thought I was in the clear when Jamin asked if I could help him with something quick.  That something was to go outside and help him catch 50 wolf spiders. For those of you who may not know me in person, I am absolutely petrified of spiders.  Those who do know me are aware that my normal reaction to spiders is to run and scream.  To quote Hyperbole and a Half, spiders are little pieces of death wrapped in scary.

But science required spiders, and so I went out with a couple old yogurt containers to hunt some spiders.  We collected 64 total!  12 of them were my catches.

Me holding the spider bucket

Little beauties

The spiders were then split into their individual cups.

We needed the spiders for an experiment on midge predation - do spiders eat more midges when they are available, or do they stick to their regular food sources?  Previous results suggest that maybe the spiders aren't dining on the midges, but are only distracted from the regular food by them.  To test this we put spiders in a jar with fruit fly maggots (which they love to eat) and midges separated by a mesh to see if the presence of the midges distracted the spider from eating as many maggots as it would without the midges present. This meant that we had to catch some midges (seen above), which is done by going near the lake and waving a net back and forth.  It took 4 people about twenty minutes to catch 3 buckets of those midges, and they're not at their peak yet!  We also had to put 10 fruit fly maggots in each experiment, which is a rather difficult task when you've got over 60 experiments.

I maybe an expert spider, midge, and maggot wrangler by now, but there is one place where I draw the line: mouth pipetting spiders.  For those not aware of mouth pipetting, it is sucking something up in a glass tube with your mouth - if you suck too hard, whatever you're pipetting ends up in your mouth.  Actually there's a mesh preventing that, but nobody told me about the mesh before sucking up a spider in front of me.  They say the look on my face was priceless.

Here's a lovely midnight sunset to offset all the spiders

Kalfastrond

Kalfastrond is the name of the peninsula on which our house is located.  It is also home to a group of lava pillars, unique geological formations that only form in lava lakes.  Besides that, it has lots of birds, sheep, a few horses that I have yet to meet and incredible views!

Our midge exclusion experiments

The house

Lava pillars

A lamb checking out our patio

Sunset at midnight

 

Today is a landmark day, because today I ate my first midge.  Actually, I had lots of adventures with arthropods today, but that will have to wait until I get the pictures off of my camera.  Yesterday was another one of those days that doesn't really count as work.  We went out on Myvatn in a boat to set midge emergence traps.  A midge emergence trap is a plastic funnel with a jelly jar screwed into the top and weights to hold it below the surface of the water.  It's also attached to a buoy and an anchor.  The idea is that when the midges emerge from the lake, some of them will emerge into the air/water boundary in the jelly jar instead.  We can come back and switch out the jars to take a look at what's inside of them.  It's a bit of a trick to get the contraption set properly in the water, but really most of our time was spend driving from one part of the lake to the next on a gorgeous sunny day!

I should also mention that boating on Myvatn is very restricted - you either have to own land on the lake or know someone who does and have a very good reason to be out there - so going out on the lake is a unique privilege!

Getting the boat ready for launch

Maddie driving

We stopped to visit some friends from the research station!  They are doing their annual bird count.

Kati, their pet polar bear

Birds of Myvatn

Birds are kind of a big deal around here.  When I interviewed for this project, they asked if I liked birds, and said that if I didn't, I would by the end of the summer.  They were right.  I have never been this excited about ducks.  People bird watch for fun around here.  The latest town gossip is that there's a juvenile eagle in the area and everyone is hoping to catch a glimpse of it (the other piece of gossip is that apparently a bunch of Americans were having a great time watching the Eurovision finale at the pizza place and knew the songs better than the Icelanders...)

There are a lot of interesting and unique birds!  There are a variety of ducks, geese, swans, grebes, loons, ravens, gulls, puffins, terns, and several kinds of little long-legged shorebird.  Most birds in Iceland are migratory and don't stay there the whole year - the familiar Canadian goose and the mallard duck can be seen here, as well as birds more commonly found in Europe.  The most common bird in Myvatn is the tufted duck, but the real star of the show is the Barrow's Goldeneye, a vagrant sea duck that breeds in large numbers at Myvatn. People come from all of the world to go bird watching here!

Everyone on the team has a favorite bird; my current favorites are the phalarope and the snipe, both cute little birds that hunt along the shoreline.  Snipes I like because I didn't actually think creatures called snipes existed - I thought snipe hunting was something made up to keep the kids busy! They're pretty funny looking with long legs and a long curved beak, and when they fly, their tail feathers make a weird whistling noise.  Phalaropes are awesome because they aren't scared of us at all, and because they are one of the few bird species to display reverse sexual dimorphism - the females are larger and more colorful, and they're the ones who fight for mates and territory.  Go girl power!

We went bird watching on the Laxa River with a friend of the group's who used to work at the research station.  She has lived along the river her entire life and knows a lot about the birds that live there!

Barrow's Goldeneye

Harlequin Duck

A Barrow's Goldeneye egg tucked away in a crevice.  This is only the first of many eggs the duck will lay.  Icelanders collect and eat the eggs, and they are very careful not to take too many.  Our friend served us a chocolate cake made with a goose egg that night.

THE GREAT NORTHERN LAKES TOUR

Besides Myvatn and Hel, there are 5 other lakes we study.  This is simply done by placing sticky tape in strategic places at each lake.  Of course, this means someone has to go to each of the lakes, a difficult task that involves driving along the coast, hiking in gorgeous places, visiting the town of Husavik, seeing lots of birds, and occasionally having coffee with the farmers who are allowing us to use their land.  Just kidding, it was a fantastic day that I don't even count as work.

This is what the experiments look like.  It's a piece of sticky plastic tied to a pole.  Later we'll come back and collect them to see how many and what type of bugs are stuck to them.  There are up to 4 of these poles in a straight line at 5, 50, 150, and 500 meters, and multiple sets of poles at each lake.  The poles are sometimes very difficult spot in the bush!

The lakes are all very picturesque!

We stopped in Husavik for lunch.  It's a fishing/tourist based town which apparently has some interesting festivals we will attend later.

One interesting point is that all the land we work is privately owned.  Even all the land around Myvatn is all privately owned - although it is a nature preserve, it's not public.  So every time we want to place an experiment, we have to ask permission from the landowner.  Most of the time it's not a problem.  In fact, one of the farmers we spoke with to let him know we were checking on our experiments invited us in for coffee and told us all about his family history. 

We stopped at some bird cliffs along the way.  There were mostly gulls, but we also saw a few puffins farther out.

SCIENCE!

Science is of course the whole reason we're here!  Last Friday, we went out to a smaller lake neighboring Myvatn that has no midges.  It's name is difficult to pronounce so it is commonly referred to as Hel (which results in some interesting sentences - "hey, who wants to go to Hel today?")   This is the midge addition experiment.  Midges were brought in from Myvatn and spread over plots of land at Hel.

See those tufts of grass?  That's where midges have been added.
Normally this area looks like heathland, with lots of dwarf birch and willow, so the grass is a big change:

Besides labeling the plots, our other task was to fix the fence, so the sheep don't come munching on the tasty grass.


On Saturday, we did maintenance work around the research station, including setting up the new water distiller (a machine that makes ultra-pure water).  We didn't have the greatest equipment to work with, resulting lots of leaks, a wet floor, and the occasional splash of water on your head.  But, mostly thanks to Patrick and duct tape, it is functional and ready for use.

Iceland's Majority

According to the internet, Iceland has more sheep than people (500,000 sheep to 300,000 people) and much of its land is devoted to pasture.  Which makes sense, because there's not much else besides grass and other small plants and sheep are incredibly efficient at converting plant mass to energy.  Icelandic sheep are an especially hardy breed, originally brought to Iceland by Viking settlers.  There's a small subset of the population called "leader sheep," which apparently are smarter than the rest.  A leader sheep is necessary to keep the flock out of trouble when they're turned loose to graze.

We had the good fortune to arrive in Iceland for the tail end of the lambing season, and the even better fortune to be offered the chance to visit a sheep farm.  Sheep usually have 2 lambs, and the lambs are kept for a year before either being kept for breeding or sold for their meat.  One sheep only goes for about 80$ tops! 

The little lambs are pretty cute.  They are very active and bounce all over the place!  They're curious but the slightest scare will send them running off to their mother.  We saw one lamb that was only two hours old!

The inside of a sheep barn is pretty crowded and smelly. 

Some sheep out to pasture.

One of two sheep dogs on the farm.  With not too many sheep outside to keep an eye on, this dog is far more concerned with getting someone to throw this stick for him!

Geology of Myvatn

Iceland is located on the Mid-Atlantic ridge and also a magma hotspot, which resulted in forming the island.  There is still volcanic activity in Iceland.  The middle of Iceland is the youngest, while the oldest parts, the coast line, have been pushed out over time.  The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is just a little to the east of Myvatn and this area has many volcanic features.

There are several of the pseudo-craters around Myvatn, especially by our research station.  They look like volcanic craters, but they are actually the result of boiling water bubbles forming and rising to the surface after the original lake (proto-Myvatn, they call it) was covered in lava.

Myvatn was first formed by glaciers and is very shallow.  It has been covered by lava at least once and is fed by geothermal hot springs.

This mountain is an example of a table top volcano.  This is what forms when a volcano erupts under a glacier and manages to melt through.

This is what happens when a volcano doesn't manage to melt through the glacier.  This is Vindbelgur, which is much smaller and sandier. It is right along the shore of Myvatn.

Our house at Kalfastrond - We have one level of this house, while our landlords, two Icelandic ladies, share the bottom level.  We are right on Lake Myvatn and are surrounded by pasture!  There are also some famous lava pillars at the end of our road, but I haven't had a chance to walk around the peninsula and take a look at them!

My room - this place has a staggering 5 bedrooms, plus a living room, which is good because we will have a lot of people living here!

The view from my window.  There are often sheep. In the back right you can see Vindbelgur, an extinct volcano

The kitchen

Gnomes peeking through our kitchen window.  There are a couple gnomes down from the wind.

So bad news first - I am horrible at predicting Eurovision.  Sweden won, which was my favorite, but second was a screeching woman with a bun made of dreadlocks that looked like a dead animal, and third was a group I couldn't even remember.  Iceland was towards the bottom, and another one of my favorites, Norway, was dead last.  Norway's snazzy boy band with wicked dance moves got beat out by Engelbert Humperdinck of the UK singing one of the cheesiest songs I've ever heard.  Apparently I do not know the psyche of Europe.

And the good news - our luggage is here! Clean clothes never felt so good.  The only problem is that my shower supplies were apparently confiscated, which I don't understand, but at least that's easily replaceable.  Or at least it would be if stores were open on Sunday and if Monday wasn't a holiday (not Memorial Day - they celebrate the day after Pentecost, which they call White Sunday).  I have about 400 pictures to sort through now!  Be prepared for a flood of pictures on this blog.

And to start - our journey to Myvatn!

 

Iceland from above

The lab's favorite coffee house in Akureyri, the Blaue Kanne

The grocery store in Akureyri.  That pig does not look healthy.

Godafoss - the story goes that when Iceland converted to Christianity, this one guy threw the old idols down the waterfall - hence its name, which means waterfall of the gods.

It's still windy out, which prevented us from going out to the lake, so instead we did some maintenance around the field station.  This involved cleaning the boat, setting up a water distiller, calibrating the ceptometer (which measures light intensity), untangling buoys, and cleaning out the back of the car.  Also I got my first lesson driving a manual car.  I only stalled about 5 times in the 100 ft from the station to the barn.  And, rumor has it that our bags are on their way here from Akureyri and should be arriving any minute now, although I've lost my faith in the reliability of luggage transport.

BUT the really important thing is EUROVISION FINALS TONIGHT

Eurovision is one of those things that is either really great or really bad and you can't tell which.  If you haven't heard of it before, Eurovision is sort of like American Idol - each country submits a group and they compete for the best pop song.  The TV audience votes for their favorites, but voting for your own country isn't allowed.  The contest is for best song, not best group, so the same songs are sung every single night.  Quality varies, though.  Also, the vast majority of entries would be considered ridiculous in America.  We've hypothesized that Eurovision songs must contain a certain number of the following items:

- Pyrotechnics
- Fans
- Mist machines
- Nonsensical lyrics
- Oddly costumed backup dancers
- 360 degree camera pans
- Maintaining eye contact with the camera throughout its 360 degree pan

The local pizza place, Dadi's Pizza, is having a Eurovision special tonight that we plan on taking advantage of.  We're having a little tournament March Madness style and have all made our best guesses at the outcome.  I'm not entirely sure how the winner will be declared but somehow there are candy bar wagers involved (Saturday is half price candy day, which they actively try to keep secret from the tourists). Here's my picks:

1. France
2. Ukraine
3. Sweden
4. Italy
5. Spain
6. Russia
7. Iceland
8. Malta
9. Estonia
10. United Kingdom
11. Cyprus
12. Germany
13. Romania
14. Norway
15. Azerbaijan
16. Denmark
17. Macedonia
18. Estonia
19. Moldova
20. Hungary
21. Lithuania
22. Ireland
23. Bosnia and Herzegovinia
24. Greece
25. Albania
26. Serbia

Not that I really have any idea how this works.  Based on the semi finals, it seems like Europe has different taste in music than I do.  Our group's favorites are Sweden, Ukraine, and Russia.   I've embedded the videos below for your viewing pleasure.  Make sure you get at least a minute into the Russian one for the full effect.

Today was the first day of serious science!  We spent the morning discussing the research and the lake and planning for the next few days.  The goal of this research is to study the transfer of nutrients from lakes to the land, which would eventually be applied to agriculture.  Aquatic insects that have one life stage in water and another on land are the major carriers of these nutrients - those would be midges in Iceland and things like mayflies in Wisconsin.  Different parts of the lake have different midge species due to changes in temperature and depth.  The lake is only 4 meters deep at most, and is 25 C where water from hot springs drains into it.  Near the river outlet it is closer to 5 C.  The midges should be out in about a week, so we're preparing to take samples.

Today I was part of the crew that went to a neighboring lake that has no midges.  We set up several data stations at varying distances from the lake with collection tools called pitfalls and infalls.  That sounds really fancy, but actually infalls are plastic cups tied to a pole, while pitfalls are cups buried in the ground.  The cups are filled with a liquid that kills insects.  The infalls are to measuring flying insects (the midges!) while the pitfalls catch crawling insects. These stations were set up as controls to compare with lakes that have midges. We also worked with one meter plots, some of which have been supplemented with dead midges brought from Myvatn.  You can immediately tell which ones these are because of the tall grass growing in them!  We labeled all the plots with their appropriate numbers, replaced any stakes that might have gone missing, and spent the majority of our time fixing up the fence around the plots.  Why the fence?  To keep the sheep out.  Can't have livestock grazing on your experiments.

The second crew spend the day getting our boats ready for the season.  I should mention who exactly is here - there's Claudio Gratton, one of the professors running the project, Jamin and Maddie, two graduate students, and Patrick, another undergraduate from Madison.  More people will be in and out throughout the summer. 

Today it was very windy and a little bit chilly out - the wind is strong enough to knock you over and will blow away anything left unattended.  Hopefully it will calm down soon, since I'm borrowing other people's warm clothes until mine get here.  Also I don't think the wind would be too good for the midges.

Yesterday evening we visited the volcanic hot springs nearby (but were quickly chased back to the car by the wind blowing up dust and small rocks) and a sheep farm at the tail end of its lambing season.  The little lambs were pretty cute!

I've arrived in Myvatn and would love to share lots of gorgeous pictures with you!  However... our luggage is apparently still in Toronto, including the cord that connects my camera to my computer.  Luckily I followed my mom's advice (thanks!) and packed a change of clothes and a toothbrush in my carry on, but we were told our stuff wouldn't arrive until Saturday at the earliest.  Great.

BUT Iceland is a beautiful country!  After over 24 hours of travel, we arrived at Akureyri, where we had lunch at the Blaue Kanne, a cafe named after a distinctive blue teapot, and then drove the rest of the way to Myvatn.  Akureyri is a pretty little coastal town and also where we will get all our groceries; it's a little over an hour away.  We also stopped at Godafoss, a big famous waterfall.  Which I have tons of pictures of.  And no way to show them to you.  I also have pictures of our farmhouse, including the sheep outside of my window, and the collection of gnomes peering at us from outside the kitchen, and of the lake, which is mere feet from the house. 

So far plans tonight include visiting the research station, possibly seeing some newborn lambs, and watching Eurovision, which is apparently a big deal around here.  As soon as my bags get here I will flood this blog with pictures.  Until then, imagine Iceland is like Mars with more moss, or Hawaii minus the jungle, or Rohan of Lord of the Rings plus volcanoes.

Somehow I've condensed everything I need into two pieces of luggage and a backpack.  I've got that nagging feeling I'm forgetting something... I just can't figure out what it is.  Oh well.  I leave very early in the morning to drive to Minneapolis, then fly into Toronto, on to Reykjavik, then a smaller plane across Iceland to Akureyri.  Finally an hour's drive to Myvatn.  Assuming no delays, we'll probably arrive Thursday afternoon, Iceland time - which is 5 hours ahead of the Midwest.  Bring on the jet lag.

Hi! My name is Alex Linz and I'm a student at the University of Wisconsin: Madison.  I've just completed my third year at Madison earning a degree in microbiology, with a certificate in German, and I'm planning on doing scientific research as a career.  This summer I'm excited to be going to Myvatn, Iceland,  (pronounced Mee-vawt) to study midges and their effects on the local ecology.  I've been working in a bacteriology lab on campus for about 2 years (Dr. Tim Donohue's lab researching biofuels, if you're interested), so I'm no stranger to research.  However, this will be my first experience with field work, and I'm excited to get out of the lab and into the wild!  As a microbiologist, studying midges (which are a kind of insect, sort of like a mayfly here in the States) and ecology is a little out of my comfort zone but I'm eager to learn more about both subjects!  I'm interested in environmental microbiology - the study of how microbes interact with the environment - so this should be a great learning experience for me.  Microbes help degrade midges after they die, and there are microbes in the lake where midges begin their lives, so I'll have plenty to get excited about.

Me doing science

So what is Iceland like?  First of all, it's not icy.  The first thing I learned is that Iceland is green, and Greenland is the icy one.  However, Iceland doesn't have trees.  It's more of a tundra, and there aren't many large animals either.  Iceland does have a wide variety of birds and plenty of life in the oceans, and of course the volcanoes and glaciers for which the country is famous. In the summer, the temperatures will be around 60 F. Iceland's population is about 320,000 people (for comparison, that's about the population of the Greater Madison Area) and 200,000 of those live near Reykjavik.  I'll be on the opposite side of the island.  The lab group is renting a farmhouse near the lake, and most of our work will be taking place at the Myvatn Research Station.  So it sounds like we'll really be out in the wilderness.  Just us and the midges.

I'll be where the A is.  Reykjavik is in the southwest.

I'll be leaving for Iceland this Wednesday.  Trying to pack everything you need for three months is very difficult!