Simulated winter warming negatively impacts survival of Antarctica’s only endemic insect

In this podcast for Functional Ecology, Assistant Editor, Frank Harris, sits down with Jack J. Devlin—an early career researcher from the University of Kentucky—to discuss his recently published paper ‘Simulated winter warming negatively impacts survival of Antarctica's only endemic insect.’ Read the paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.14089 Read a transcript of this interview here: https://functionalecologists.com/2022/07/12/simulated-winter-warming-negatively-impacts-survival-of-antarcticas-only-endemic-insect-podcast-transcript/ A plain language summary of this study is available here: https://fesummaries.wordpress.com/2022/05/20/simulated-winter-warming-negatively-impacts-survival-of-antarcticas-only-endemic-insect/ Antarctic winters are challenging for terrestrial invertebrates, and species that live there have specialised adaptations to conserve energy and protect against cold injury in the winter. However, rapidly occurring climate change in these regions will increase the unpredictability of winter conditions, and there is currently a dearth of knowledge on how the highly adapted invertebrates of Antarctica will respond to changes in winter temperatures. With warmer winters expected to become more common with climate change, this study’s results indicate that winter warming could negatively impact cold-adapted insects like the Antarctic midge (Belgica antarctica). At the time of writing, this research is “in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric”.

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