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Science Quickly

Arctic Pollinator Faces Uncertain Future

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2016

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A housefly relative appears to be key to the reproductive success of a hardy tundra shrub. But the insect is threatened by the warming climate. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.6

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:38.8

The Greenland High Arctic is a bare, sparse place.

0:43.2

Rather than tall trees, it has tundra, ground-hugging vegetation,

0:47.2

and rugged Lord of the Rings-style vistas.

0:50.8

Well, I don't know.

0:52.4

It's not exactly in New Zealand, but kind of seeming long landscape.

0:59.6

Miko Tujan is an ecologist at Helsinki University in Finland.

1:03.3

The winter season is like six, seven months. So everything basically happens during the short summer season.

1:11.6

Including the white yellow bloom of Mountain Avans, a hardy Arctic shrub.

1:16.6

Even though it's small, it could be like over 100 years old.

1:19.6

It's pretty good at surviving harsh conditions.

1:23.6

Tiozinen and his colleagues set out to census which of the many local insects visit mountain havens by summer and help with the pollination.

1:31.4

So they planted 2,100 sticky flower lookalikes as traps and identified stuck visitors by their DNA.

1:39.0

Two-thirds of all local insect species visited, but it was one particular fly, a relative of the humble housefly,

1:45.7

that showed up most often in those spots where the tundra shrubs had successfully set seed,

1:51.2

meaning more flies appeared to be a good thing for the Avans. The study appears in the

1:56.1

proceedings of the Royal Society B. Here's the bad news. A 2013 study found that the Arctic flowering season is shortening.

...

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