Tracking arthropod and plant populations in nature preserves and on Georgetown University campuses, biology professor
Edd Barrows is intimately familiar with the landscape on the Hilltop.
While sitting on a bench among the lush green plants and flowers of Heyden Memorial Garden, Barrows looks around and explains, “I have a life-long interest in biodiversity, in everything around us related to life.” He then points out a butterfly, a Dancing White, and explains that the large wooded area just next to the garden, located near the Yates Field House and Heyden Observatory, is actually Glover Archbold Park, a part of the National Park System.
View Research News' Insight: Professor Edd Barrows
In the Heyden Garden alone, Barrows speculates there are more than 100 species of plants and more than 1,000 species of arthropods. The latter includes insects, spiders and crustaceans. Throughout the world, arthropods perform many invaluable ecosystem services such as aerating soil, aiding in organic decomposition and nutrient recycling, filling crucial roles in food chain and pollinating crops and other plants. The majority of crop plant species depend on insects for pollination. The earth would soon face major food shortages and possibly starvation if this important ecosystem service ceased to exist.
Unfortunately because of global warming, many arthropods are in great jeopardy.
“Earth is undergoing a major anthropogenic biodiversity crisis,” explains Barrows. “We are inadvertently causing beneficial species to go extinct daily and killing untold numbers of them by destroying their habitats.”
In view of the major importance of arthropods, Barrows’ Laboratory of Entomology and Biodiversity is performing research on arthropods in local national parks, as well as in Wisconsin. The local national parks are the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, George Washington Memorial Parkway and Glover Archbold Park. Each of these parks faces many harsh assaults in air, soil and water pollution; overuse by people; and devastation by hundreds of species of alien, invasive organisms.
To help rescue and preserve the habitats and species in danger, Barrows and his students go where they are needed, receiving grants from a variety of sources to collect and analyze information. On the Virginia side of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Barrows and the students in his lab, including biology graduate student
Aaron Howard (G’13), work with the National Park Service to determine why three plant species are rare in the area. This research focuses on the importance of pollination in the conservation of the plants.
With the view of managing the biota of the parks -- a mission mandated by federal law -- Barrows’ lab is helping the National Park Service to learn which arthropods live in its parks, their numbers and which habitats they occupy. Some of the lab’s work is explained in the 2006 environmental film “On the Edge: The Potomac River’s Dyke Marsh,” which premiered to a standing-room-only crowd at the Kennedy Center.
In Wisconsin, Barrows’ lab is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Air National Guard to learn how to use adaptive management for the federally endangered Karner Blue Butterfly. Adaptive management is a process that involves learning about the biology of a species and how it reacts to existing management practices. By gathering and analyzing information, practices can be modified and improved. A small butterfly with beautifully patterned blue wings, the Karner Blue has a rich biological and cultural history. It was named Lycaeides melissa samuelis by the renowned Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who was an amateur lepidopterist.
Barrows, who received his bachelor’s in biology from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Kansas teaches forest ecology to undergraduates. He became increasingly interested in the natural history of Georgetown’s Main and Medical Center campuses as he and students studied organisms on Georgetown grounds.
Over time, humans have transformed the area from forest to pasture land and then into a vibrant university, making the land into an artificial savanna with many new tree species, buttes, cliffs and other features. He describes this transformation process in his most recent book, “Nature, Gardens, and Georgetown” (Xylocopa Press, 2006). Filled with original and historic photos of areas in Georgetown, Barrows’ book shows the university in its early years surrounded by farmland, describes the historic College walkways -- now long gone -- and identifies many of the insects, plants and other organisms that may be found locally.
His lab also provides educational information online with the
Biodiversity Database of the Washington, D.C., Area. Primarily a creation of Barrows and Dan Kjar, a graduate student who received his master’s in biology in 2002 and Ph.D. in 2005, the Web site includes information on local organisms, as well as reports by Georgetown undergraduates and photos of the biology seniors at their annual Senior Thesis Symposium.
Another Web site focusing on arthropods in the D.C. area was created with the help of four undergraduates jointly interning at the National Park Service and Georgetown.
Barrows’ lab also includes two joint Washington Biologists’ Field Club and GU interns who are working on four taxonomic families of flies of Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve.
Another significant focus of Barrows’ work is scientific communication. Written for both the scientific and nonscientific communities, his book “Animal Behavior Desk Reference: A Dictionary of Animal Behavior, Ecology and Evolution” (CRC Press, 2000) concerns terminology and concepts of biology with a focus on organismal biology. As in other scientific areas, this terminology is vast and often puzzling, even to some biologists in the field. Barrows is currently working on a third edition of this best-selling scientific text.
In addition to his teaching, research, and writing, he serves as the director of the Georgetown
Center for the Environment, chair of the Committee on Science Buildings and a member of the Graduate School Executive Committee. He also supervises the student-produced Georgetown University Journal of the Environment, works to promote environmental awareness on campus and assists undergraduate and graduate students with their thesis and nonthesis research. His recent courses include forest ecology and Foundations in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior.
“I like to see students learn about basic ecology and forest biodiversity -- the conservation challenges and all,” Barrows says. “When they recognize forest health can be linked to human health, they have a new appreciation for the environment.”
This story was contributed by Research News, an online publication for Georgetown College.
