Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

By Megan Weintraub

Armed with a deep ethical investment in the health of local and global ecosystems and a 40-pound machine powered by a modified lawnmower engine and designed to suck up bugs, Dr. Gina Wimp, an assistant professor in Georgetown’s Department of Biology, looks for strategies to mitigate the effects of ecological destruction. The implications of this destruction take many forms, including rapid increases in the spread of disease and the eradication of plant and animal species within all kinds of habitats. Since many scientists believe that habitat loss is the primary cause of species extinction, Dr. Wimp’s research is a vital contribution to stemming this irreversible and catastrophic trend.

Dr. Wimp arrived at Georgetown in August 2007, but her experience in the field of ecology runs back to her childhood.

“I first got into ecology because of my mother,” Dr. Wimp says. “She was the leader of my Girl Scout troop and an avid botanist. When we were on hikes, she knew the names of all of the plants, and she’d point out which ones you could eat if you were stranded in the wilderness.”

With an eye toward conservation and restoration, Dr. Wimp’s research resides in landscape community ecology, a subdiscipline of ecology that examines the effects of habitat modification on biodiversity. For her fieldwork, she leads a small group of students through the muggy salt marshes of New Jersey and North Carolina to measure the multifaceted impact of destruction on these protected areas. Her students enthusiastically brave the warm weather and biting insects in order to examine the sources and effects of ecological destruction, and Dr. Wimp encourages them to contribute solutions to this growing problem.

“I very much want my students to get into their own aspect of research on what structures biodiversity rather than just working on my research,” she explains. “I try to create more of a colleague relationship with the students. I like to see their minds tick.”

Dr. Wimp and her students collect samples of the species that live in the salt marshes and then study the changes across space and over time. Intertidal areas, such as salt marshes, often serve as a buffer and filter for estuaries, which are vital ecosystems that feed directly into our oceans. Due to development and rising sea levels, many species are forced to adapt to change too quickly. Even minute changes in the habitat of one species can cascade across an entire ecosystem. For example, all species have core habitat requirements, or space and resources they need to survive. Each habitat, therefore, has a core and an edge. As species are pushed further to the edge of their desired habitat, they are less likely to thrive. In New Jersey, Dr. Wimp researches the edge effects of two species of grasses—marsh hay (Spartina patens) and smooth cord grass (Spartina alterniflora)—to trace the rate of destruction and the effects on the invertebrate species that rely on the grasses for survival.

“What we see is that the marsh hay is feeling the squeeze from every direction,” explains Dr. Wimp. “As the cord grass invades, the core habitat of the marsh hay gets smaller and smaller, and populations that depend on these grasses have nowhere to go. Edge effects show us the mechanism of how that happens.”

In North Carolina, Dr. Wimp’s research focuses the effects of nutrient runoff on the salt marsh community. In collaboration with Dr. Shannon Murphy from George Washington University, Dr. Wimp observed that nutrient runoff increases the number of predatory species, making the system “top-heavy.”

“These predators feed not only on herbivores, which eat live plant material, but also on detritivores, which eat dead plant material,” explains Dr. Wimp. “Because changes in herbivore and detritivore communities will ultimately affect nutrient cycling in these systems, we are examining the long-term consequences of anthropogenic nutrient-loading to the functioning of these ecosystems.”

The disequilibrium found within ecosystems due to the rapid decline of species diversity holds significant consequences for human populations because of the relationship between species eradication and human disease. For example, Dr. Wimp cites the link that scientists have traced between increased deforestation and the rise in rates of Lyme disease among humans in the northeast United States and malaria in parts of the Amazon due to the displacement of predatory populations.

“Many predatory populations increase along habitat edges, but their prey populations dwindle as habitats shrink in size,” says Dr. Wimp. “With continued habitat loss, they may no longer be able to find the prey resources they need to survive.”

Dr. Wimp has also made a significant contribution to the field of community genetics, a branch of biology that looks at the effects of genetic diversity within individual species on all of the organisms that interact with this species in a community. Recently, she has built on her work with common garden experiments in order to affect conservation policy decisions (see related article).

“We’re losing species at such an unprecedented rate,” says Dr. Wimp with concern. “As ecologists, we have a responsibility to bridge the people making policy decisions on local, state, and national levels. I want to be part of the solution.”

In the classroom, Dr. Wimp inspires the next generation of ecologists to understand and remedy the vast habitat destruction that faces species all over the world. She currently teaches a course for Biology majors called Global Climate Change Ecology and next fall she will teach Ecological Analysis, a course designed for students to learn the fundamentals of experimental design and statistics.

While her career at Georgetown has just begun, Dr. Wimp already appreciates the supportive environment she has found in the Department of Biology. Fueled by the support of her colleagues and significant experience in the field, she is making important strides to curb the effects of our behavior on our ecological habitats.

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