Howard Glacier

January 21, 2008 at 4:49 pm | In Field Season |

Breana and Ed went to Howard Glacier to collect some collembolans for Angela McGaughrin, a PhD student in New Zealand who is studying their genetics. The Collembola live under flat pebbles in damp areas of the Dry Valleys near streams and lakes. They can be quite abundant in these areas, with tens of individuals under a single hand-sized rock.

Breana and Ed collected about 200 Collembola and placed them in a container with soil and rocks to keep them happy. The container was sent over to Scott Base, the New Zealand base in Antarctica, once they got back to McMurdo.

The glacier is made of ice and about 40-50 meters high at its face. Here you can just make out Breana in front of the glacier.
Breana in front of Howard Glacier

Breana in front of Howard Glacier
Breana at Howard Glacier

Along the front of the glacier there were several chunks of insulating foam that probably came from a survival cache that exploded two years ago in a big storm. Breana was not impressed…
Rubbish is bad!

2 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. Hello Breana - Glad to see you all made it safely. I have started our new semester and have new students with some questions. As before, I just post a few at a time.

    1. What is the coldest it has been since you have been down there? - Tony A

    2. What is the warmest it has been since you have been down there? - Kevin

    3. What exactly are nematode and are there different species of nematodes? - Dan

    4. What are the nematodes being tested for and what are the results used for? - Alexa

    Thank you in advance.

    Ann Marie

    Comment by Ann Marie Chamberlain — January 24, 2008 #

  2. Hi Breana & Diana–

    Fancy me bookmarking a website on nematodes! The best part of being the temporary events librarian at FCPL was getting to know you guys and learning all about the Antarctic.

    Great to actually SEE you down there, Breana. You guys are dog some amazing stuff! I’ll BEE very interested to hear about he global warming results.

    Go Wormherders!!

    Melissa

    Comment by Melissa Powell — January 25, 2008 #

Leave a comment

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.