Denali Holds First Bug Bio-Blitz

Seven arthropod researchers were invited to Denali National Park and Preserve in July to conduct the park’s first “Bug Bio-Blitz,” an intensive effort to catalog the biodiversity of several invertebrate taxa within just a few days.

Scientists hailed from Alaska and across the rest of the United States – Logan Mullen from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (rove beetles); Dan Bogan from the Alaska Natural Heritage Program at University Alaska Anchorage and Luise Woelflein from the BLM Campbell Creek Science Center (aquatic insects); Whitney Nelson, Joseph O’Neill, and Cameron Cheri from the University of Arkansas (aquatic mites); and Jessica Rykken, affiliated with the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University (bees and flower flies).

The goals of the Denali Bug Bio-Blitz were to engage the public with scientists collecting and examining lesser-known realms of biodiversity in the park and encourage invertebrate taxonomists to catalog the diversity of their focal taxa and lay foundations for future collaborative research. These were no small aspirations in a park known and visited primarily for its charismatic mammalian megafauna.

The public outreach day on July 26th was filled with events encouraging visitors and local area residents to join scientists in biodiversity discovery. These included:

• Collection activities with scientists on the park’s frontcountry trails;
• An indoor “lab” session at the Murie Science and Learning Center, where visitors could get an up-close view of specimens that had been collected that morning and talk one-on-one with the scientists;
• A catch-and-release outdoor session with younger children and their parents; and
• An evening presentation where each scientist explained his or her research focus and provided some background about the organisms studied.

The scientists then headed into further into the park for three days (July 27th to July 29th) for collecting. The aquatic group headed to the end of the 92-mile long park road so that they could sample kettle ponds and streams with mining legacies as well as pristine streams for aquatic mites. The aquatic mite researchers collected species representing at least 10 genera. These collections represent some of the first official water mite samples ever collected in Alaska, and could include species currently unknown to science.

The terrestrial group headed up into the high country in search of accessible snow fields and alpine flowers in bloom. After one unsuccessful day of searching in the wind and rain for Phlaeopterus, a genus of rove beetles that live near snow patches on which they prey upon windblown insects, a search up a steep, shady stream on the back side of Sable Mountain the following day yielded two specimens that are members of a new Phlaeopterus species yet to be described. Sunshine produced more pollinators also. It was a highly productive few days for scientific discoveries.

Funding for the Denali Bug Bio-Blitz was provided by the Natural Resources Advisory Commission of the National Park Service, Denali National Park and Preserve, and Alaska Geographic.