Polar Caps?

[overcome]

In the Edit Map section, when building maps, there is a toggle for Polar Caps. Does anyone know what this means??? I used it for the first time, not knowing, and I suspect it allows for units to travel from the top to the bottom of the screen, as if they were attached. If this is not the case, I am really confused. I have enemy colony pods and other units appearing at the top most tiles and can't figure out how they get there.

[LoD]

The polar caps option only adds two narrow strips of land on both the northern and southern ends of the map.

LoD