Insects in Antarctica? Yes!
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Later this fall, Entomoloy Professor and Department Chair David L. Denlinger will set off with a research team for Palmer Station, Antarctica to take advantage of the “balmy” arctic summer.
Denlinger has always been interested in how insects survive in extreme environments, and this is probably the most extreme environment one can imagine.
Denlinger and collaborator Rick Lee of Miami University received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study a small insect that lives encased in ice for much of its life cycle.
The insect Denlinger, Lee, two of Denlinger’s postdoctoral researchers and a high-school science teacher will be looking at is a midge, about the size of a mosquito, that spends 11 months encased in ice then emerges to hydrate itself, feed on algae and reproduce.
Denlinger’s lab was the first to discover that stress proteins play an important role in allowing insects to enter diapause, a state similar to hibernation in animals, which is a key factor in their survival.
The grant will fund a team of five researchers to work in Antarctica for the next three years and provides for including a teacher who will do web-based instruction as part of the project. A different teacher will accompany the team each year.
For recognition of his outstanding reputation as a research cientist, Denlinger was recently named to the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps the highest honor a U.S. scientist can receive.
Denlinger is also involved in ongoing work in Kenya on the tsetse fly, the carrier of African sleeping sickness and projects in Panama and the United States.
Originally published Autumn 2004
