YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Over the summer, a University of Wyoming (UW) biology student uncovered a tiny and rare bug in Yellowstone National Park (YNP).
Will Anderson, a junior at UW from Casper, searched for the ice crawler insect last summer in YNP to no avail. This year, he found three. According to the limited internet resources available on Grylloblattodea, there are only around 30 to 35 species worldwide. This makes it one of the smallest and rarest orders of insect on earth. UW states that most species are known to only hail from a single location.
“I am interested in this insect because there is so much not known about them, with their life history, habitat and distribution all not being fully understood,” Anderson said in an online UW article. “I also am passionate about and interested in their alpine habitats, which are understudied.”
The order Grylloblattodea only lives in small pockets in the northern hemisphere, including Asia, Siberia, and the western United States and Canada. Ice crawler populations are typically found in disconnected areas in mountains and ice caves. The bugs live at temperatures as low as 21°F in humid alpine environments. According to UW, ice crawlers can be found under cool rocks near snow and ice during the day, and scavenging for food at night.
“The specimens I collected in Wyoming are so far identified to the species Grylloblatta campodeiformis, which is the most widespread North American species, having populations in Montana, British Columbia and Alberta,” Anderson said. He later added: “Little is known of their diet when they are more permanently under the snow and in the soil during the summer and winter temperatures. I briefly kept two specimens alive, but I couldn’t tell if they were feeding on the dead insects and plant matter that I gave them.”
To look for the elusive bugs, Anderson joined Audrey Lindsteadt, another UW student, who was conducting research on Yellowstone’s rock glaciers last year. They reunited this summer and walked about 170 miles during surveys, inspecting rock glaciers for ice crawlers. On the pair’s first backpacking trip of the season, in late June, Anderson discovered two ice crawlers near Antler Peak in northwest YNP. In July, he found the third ice crawler near Grey Peak.
“On this specific day, our original plans were actually hindered by an angry mother grizzly and her two-year-old cub that bluff-charged us,” Lindsteadt recalled to UW. “Instead of going toward the rock glaciers we originally planned to survey – which also happened to be where the bears went – we scrambled up Grey Peak and slid down the mountain to its two rock glaciers. Which led to Will finding another one of the rare insects.”
Anderson searched several alpine glaciers in Grand Teton National Park in August, but did not find any more ice crawlers. He plans to present his results at the 74th annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Columbus, Ohio, in November. He is also working on a paper that he hopes to publish in scientific journals.
“Ice crawlers probably play a small part in these ecosystems due to their rarity but, still, are included in the food chains and nutrient cycles of their extreme habitats,” Anderson said. “More importantly, we can use ice crawlers to better understand how these ecosystems work and be more effective managers of them.”
