One of the World’s Most Unusual Plants Is Disappearing

Noted: Key to Mývatn’s productivity is its huge population of midges—the small flies that give the lake its name (mý means flies and vatn means lake in Icelandic). In peak years, the amount of midges that emerge every summer equals the biomass of roughly 10 humpback whales, says Anthony Ives, a University of Wisconsin, Madison ecologist who studies Mývatn midges.