What Are Flies Doing In The Middle Of The Ocean?

In the North Sea — between the United Kingdom, Norway and Denmark — thousands of flies swarmed an oil rig. Engineer Craig Hannah noticed they’d stay still on the rig for hours, suddenly taking off all at once. He was seeing hoverflies. Often confused with bees, they’re unsung pollinators. And they migrate, often hundreds of miles – including, it seems, to the middle of the ocean. Today on the show: The mystery of why these insects are landing in the open ocean. Plus, a surprising finding in the Amazon rainforest and the sounds of life in a coral reef. Interested in more science behind skincare products? Email us your question at [email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:49Speaker 00

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:55Regina Barber?

  Hey, Short Wavers, Regina Barber here.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  And Burleigh McCoy.

• 0:58Regina Barber?

  With our biweekly Science News Roundup featuring the hosts of All Things Considered, and today, we have the West Coast host with the most, Elsa Chang.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  West Coast is the best coast. Thank you so much, guys. So I hear we are going to be talking about flies on oil rigs. So gross.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Yes. Oh, they're cool, but also a surprising finding in the Amazon forest.

• 1:21Regina Barber?

  And lastly, fish sounds in a coral reef.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Cool. OK, so we've got flies hovering in the air, we've got some forest action, and we've got some sea action, yeah?

• 1:31Regina Barber?

  Yeah, yeah. We have it all. You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 3:12Speaker 03

  All right, to start us off, tell me about these flies hanging out in the middle of the ocean.

• 3:17Regina Barber?

  Yeah, so this story starts with an oil rig in the North Sea that's between the UK, Norway, and Denmark. And on this rig, engineer Craig Hanna noticed that sometimes thousands of flies would land on the rig in the middle of the ocean, stay really still for hours, and then take off again all at once.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Okay, so what exactly are these flies doing out there?

• 3:38Regina Barber?

  Yeah, so they're a type of fly called a hoverfly. They're stripy, they're often confused with bees, and they're an unsung pollinator. They're in the second most important group after bees. And they migrate, often hundreds of miles, which explains why they're in the middle of the ocean. Craig, who's also a bit of a naturalist, thought scientists might be interested in studying these insects in the open ocean, since most bugs are studied from land. So he started collecting fly samples whenever groups of hoverflies landed. And he sent them to a research team at the University of Exeter.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, I think bees are way cooler than flies. But, OK, what did the team learn about these flies?

• 4:16Speaker 02

  OK, so Eva Humaizguri, a biologist on the team, says they were surprised by how much pollen the hoverflies were carrying.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  And these six flies were carrying more than 100 species of plants. Wow, OK, I'm impressed now.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that included common nettle, black elder, and meadowsweet. And when the team looked at wind trajectories for the flies Craig collected, they determined that some of them likely came from the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark, more than 300 miles away. So Eva and her team published the results in the Journal of Animal Ecology earlier this month.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Wait, what does it mean that these hoverflies are carrying so much pollen over these huge distances?

• 4:58Regina Barber?

  Yeah, Eva says this is likely the first time scientists have looked at the pollen that flies are carrying over water at this distance. Gerard Talavera, an entomologist who wasn't involved in this paper, says these flies could have a big impact on pollination when they arrive at their destinations. And he says hoverflies could be important in introducing brand-new genes to faraway plants on their journey.

• 5:20Speaker 05

  And this exchange of genes that can happen in both directions might help plants to adapt to climatic change, for example.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  So next, the researchers want to test if this long-distance pollen survives the journey and can actually pollinate plants.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Hmm, OK. Let's jump to a totally different part of the world, the Amazon rainforest. Burley, what is the news over there?

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so a new study out in the journal Nature Plants found that trees in the Amazon rainforest have increased in size, on average, in the last three decades. The researchers say that's likely a result of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuel.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Wait, what? Our greenhouse gas pollution is actually helping these trees get bigger and bigger?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, in a way, the trees grew by about 3% each decade the researchers studied, which is more than expected. They say that's a reminder that trees play a significant role in taking in carbon dioxide, CO2, and helping fight climate change.

• 6:20Regina Barber?

  But the researchers wanted to clarify that this finding doesn't mean the Amazon is totally fine. Even though the trees seem to be getting bigger, deforestation does pose a huge threat to the Amazon, and climate change more broadly is linked to drought, which kills trees and means the forest can't store as much carbon.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Right. So what does all that carbon mean for the long-term health of the Amazon, then?

• 6:43Regina Barber?

  Yeah, so it means that the forest is resilient for now. Here's one of the study authors, Adriani Escavell Muehlberg.

• 6:50Speaker 06

  The Amazon has this capacity to tolerate changes in climate. Now we have to stop deforesting because we need those forests to provide the services for us. And they can resist, at least for now.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Another study author, Becky Banbury Morgan, added, "It's important to remember this study is just one snapshot of the rainforest. It doesn't tell us how the trees will continue to respond in the future, especially with those climate-related factors like heat stress, wildfires, and drought."

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Okay, let's go under the sea now.

• 7:22Regina Barber?

  Under the sea.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. And listen to some sounds that, wait, fish make? I had no idea fish can even make sounds.

• 7:28Regina Barber?

  I mean, I didn't really realize this either until I started reporting on it. But fish can make sounds. They sometimes use their teeth, or their fins, or like muscles attached to their swim bladder. Here, Elsa, take a listen.

• 7:43Regina Barber?

  So that's a long-spine squirrelfish vibrating its swim bladder off the coast of Curazao, an island north of Venezuela. And it lives in the coral reefs there. And here is a three-spot damselfish, and it's rubbing or snapping its teeth.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  OK, why are these researchers even listening to these fish?

• 8:02Speaker 02

  So these sounds allow them to take a sort of census of which fish are living in a certain area. And scientists have sound libraries like this for various birds and whales, but it's much more limited for fish. So these researchers just built a sound library of 50 fish species, which they wrote about in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  But to record these sounds, like, is it as simple as sticking a special microphone into the water? Like, how did they do this?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Well, they do use underwater microphones, but they couple those with a 360 video system. Here's Aaron Rice from Cornell University and a co-author of the study.

• 8:39Speaker 07

  By combining 360 video and being able to sort of look all the way around us for the first time, we can actually match the visual image of the fish with the sound that it's producing.

• 8:50Regina Barber?

  Although the researchers do note that this camera mic system needs improvement to like more accurately mesh the visuals with specific sound.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  OK. Well, tell me, how can these sounds help marine biologists?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, if they listen to a fish population, they can decipher which fish are thriving there, whether they're mating, because they make different sounds for courting and also whether they're migrating to different parts of the ocean. And that can tell scientists something about their environment. Here's Mark Dansker. He's a marine biologist and lead author of the study.

• 9:21Speaker 08

  You can't really listen to the corals. You can listen to the fish, and they can tell you something about the overall health of the reef.

• 9:27Regina Barber?

  He's hopeful that knowing more about which fish exist in which reefs and how many of them there are there can tell us more about the reef without using like more intrusive methods like catching fish.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Oh, very cool.

• 9:38Regina Barber?

  I think so. Elsa, thank you so much for hanging out with us. It's always a pleasure.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Oh, I love doing this, you guys.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  We love having you on the show.

• 9:46Regina Barber?

  Thank you so much.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  I love being here. Thank you to both of you.

• 9:51Regina Barber?

  You can hear more of Elsa on Consider This, NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you. This episode was produced by Jordan Marie Smith and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez, Patrick Jaren-Watananen, and Christopher Intagliata.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Tyler Jones checked the facts. Tiffany Vera Castro and Patrick Murray were the audio engineers. I'm Burleigh McCoy.

• 10:10Regina Barber?

  And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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