What's with all the carets?

[ngscheurich]

This only occurs after opening NERDTree.

[codehearts]

Vim uses carets to differentiate between StatusLine and StatusLineNC if they have the same colors set. I'm not seeing this in my airline, but I do see it in the wildmenu when I change color schemes or open files so maybe it's related?

Do they go away if you change the colors with :highlight StatusLine cterm=none ctermfg=white ctermbg=black guibg=black?