Arctic insects under climate change

The arctic is warming more rapidly than any other ecosystem on earth. Due to its rate of change, the arctic region may provide early peeks into what next to expect in other biomes. Over the last two decades, we have thus invested much effort into understanding how arctic communities are structured overall, how arctic species interact with each other, and how arctic communities are changing with climate change.

Insights

Some of our bench-mark studies to date have revealed surprising complexity in the structure of arctic interaction networks. Where the previous view held that arctic populations are mainly affected by the harsh climate, we have shown how arctic species form highly complex interaction networks. Give how tightly the species are woven together by live interactions, overall response to climate change will be much different from the case where each species responded on its own. We have also shown that climate change is already reshaping communities across the Arctic. Different regions are changing at a different pace, and when we compare them we can find differential imprints of this differential change.

A new focus on microclimate

Arctic climate change will affect not only overall or mean conditions (macroclimate), but finer climatic variation within the landscapes (microclimate). The latter, fine-scale variation is likely to be what really matters for the species inhabiting the landscapes. Therefore, we work intensely on resolve arctic climatic variation at different scales using high-resolution remote-sensing data and physical models of the local climate. Our insights into climatic conditions we link to arctic arthropod biodiversity, which we describe using DNA barcoding of arthropod bulk samples. Some of our favourite field sites in the Arctic and Subarctic regions, respectively, are the Zackenberg Research Station (GREENLAND) Kilpisjärvi (FINLAND), the Varanger Peninsula (NORWAY).