Currently, an expedition of the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS, with the information support of the Institute of Geography RAS is underway in the Tsey gorge. It includes entomologists, an acarologist (tick specialist) and a hydrobiologist. The main goal of the expedition is to study the process of the formation of forest communities as the Tsey glacier retreats.
On the surface freed from ice, fireweed seeds sprout almost immediately, beetles and spiders flock on their cobwebs, and long-legged opiliones are drawn to it as well. The expedition is equipped with maps on which the employees of the Institute of Geography have marked lines dividing zones of different ages - from one year to 170 years and more. These dates were obtained by analyzing aerial and satellite images, as well as by drilling cores from the trunks of the Koch pine, which settled a decade after the glacier left. During the work of the ecological expedition, material is collected on soil amoebas, nematode worms, springtails, soil mites, microscopic fungi and algae. Various methods (traps, floating, sifting the bedding) are used to catch beetles, spiders and millipedes. Hundreds of soil samples have been delivered and will still be brought to laboratories in Moscow for analysis of the population of microarthropods after their extraction in special eclectrics.
11
August
2021