“Interactions between species are so much simpler to study in the Arctic than in the rest of world. By way of example, we found almost 30,000 different insects in a tropical rain forest of only 6,000 ha, while here in the tundra in north-east Greenland, there are only some 300 different species,” says associate professor Tomas Roslin from the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Tomas Roslin sets up traps and takes samples at the Zackenberg Research Station in north-east Greenland. He has been here every summer since 2009 to gather all species within the area. By describing the same gene for all species, you may use its sequence as an unambiguous and easily readable character to identify any species.

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