Glacier mice have no feet, but they still move in herds
Glacier moss balls in Alaska (Tim Bartholomaus/)At a science-themed happy hour in a bar located in between the University of Idaho and Washington State University, glaciologist Scott Hotaling was talking about his research on ice worms. It was a late Friday afternoon in 2018. Sophie Gilbert, a wildlife ecologist, and Tim Bartholomaus, a glaciologist and geophysicist, both professors at the University of Idaho, sat at the bar, surrounded by graduate students, postdocs, and professors. Gilbert and Bartholomaus, who have been married since 2012, first met at an undergraduate research program in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska in 2006. One day while hiking on Root Glacier, they came across a herd of soft, pillowy clumps of moss—these glacier moss balls, made of moss usually wrapped around dust or sediment, live in small herds on glaciers. After a year of extensive research in 2009, followed by return trips to the glacier for...