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.
It can already be confirmed that earthworms, woodlice and shrews settle only 7 years after the ice melt, and millipedes and forest cockroaches only 100 years after the accumulation of forest litter. At the same time, dead woods appear in the forest, where a whole complex of new newcomers is formed in the rotten wood.
The processing of the collected materials will continue for at least a year.
In addition, analyzing the taxonomic diversity of a number of groups of invertebrates will certainly bring the study of many new species, as it has happened more than once with materials from the Tsey Gorge. We have already discovered the habitation of three new for science species of aquatic crustaceans and insects in the studied area.
The work of the expedition continues ceaselessly with the full support of the reserve staff. Every day we gather new information about the inhabitants of this unique place. Inventory of biodiversity and analysis of the structure of natural communities of different ages in the Tsei gorge in a rapidly changing climate is of undoubted interest in the long term.
