ABOVE: Signy Island Research Station, Antarctica
© JESAMINE BARTLETT
If a tiny, flightless midge establishes itself on mainland Antarctica, it could unleash outsized changes on the continent’s biodiversity, researchers from the University of Birmingham and British Antarctic Survey warned today (December 19) at the annual meeting of the British Ecological Society. The scientists reached this conclusion by studying the midge’s biology and its transformation of peat moss banks on Signy Island, where it has become an invasive species, about 600 km from the Antarctic Peninsula.
“It’s a really exquisite study,” says Helen Roy, a community ecologist at Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK, who was not part of the work. She notes that the researchers meticulously amassed evidence of the invasive midge’s impact, which can be extremely difficult to do in more complex ecosystems. “It’s really exciting to see that not only have they been tracking the spread of ...
