Hello and Happy New Year! Welcome back to Polar Times! 

On today's episode, Jack is joined by Dominik Arend an ecologist from the University of Freiburg who is currently writing an MSc thesis on Arctic foxes, specifically looking at their denning activity and how this impacts soil nutrition and vegetation. Turns out foxes are ecosystem engineers! We talk about fieldwork in Iceland and Domink's experiences with Arctic foxes, how Iceland's Arctic foxes differ from their more northern relations, and how Arctic foxes interact with and are impacted by human activities...

We also chat about funding and Dominik has some great tips for writing your own research proposal and getting funding for a project, even at the early-career stage! 

As usual, if you would like to get in contact with Polar Times to recommend a guest, volunteer to be a guest, give us some feedback or just ask a question then you can email us (thesearepolartimes@gmail.com) or tweet APECS @Polar_Research any time- we would love to hear from you.

Episode edited by Damien Ringeisen

Cover art by Matthew Nelson

Music: "Scuba" by Metre, Nul Tiel Records, UK (unaltered) CC BY-NC-SA