Winifred Hallwachs

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Winnie Hallwachs
Born
Winifred Hallwachs

(1954-10-11) October 11, 1954 (age 69)
Alma materPhiladelphia High School for Girls, Princeton University, Cornell University
Known forTropical ecology, biodiversity development
SpouseDaniel H. Janzen
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Pennsylvania, Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund, Área de Conservación Guanacaste

Winifred Hallwachs (born October 11, 1954) is an American

Daniel Janzen at ACG is considered an exemplar of inclusive conservation.[3]

Beginning in 1978, Winnie Hallwachs' early research focused on the

seed dispersers of the hardwood tree guapinol.[4]

Beginning in 1985, Hallwachs and Janzen revised their work to include the restoration, expansion, and conservation of

parataxonomists and North American tropical biologists.[5][8][9][10]

At least eight insect species have been named after Hallwachs.

Life and work

Early life and education

Winifred Hallwachs was born on October 11, 1954. She grew up in New York State and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1976, Hallwachs graduated from Princeton University[11] with a BA in biochemistry. After Princeton, Hallwachs spent a year in Sweden. Her first trip to the tropics was to visit her sister in the Peace Corps in the Central African Republic.[9]

Hallwachs returned to Philadelphia, where she enrolled in

Daniel Janzen's "Habitat and Organisms" course at the University of Pennsylvania. The class addressed the natural history of tropical animal-plant interactions often drawing from Janzen's research in Guanacaste, a province in northwestern Costa Rica. Hallwachs joined Janzen as a volunteer on his next trip to Costa Rica. She has collaborated with him since 1978.[9]

Early career and doctoral research

In Guanacaste, Hallwachs identified the animal-plant interaction that would become the focus of her doctoral research. Hallwachs' focused her early research on the Central American agoutis (

Leguminosae) and other primary forest trees. Agoutis are house-cat-sized forest rodents and the guapinol is a hardwood tree whose large and hard seeds were originally dispersed by now extinct tropical megafauna. Hallwachs fitted fruits with spools of thread to follow the trails of the agoutis to their secret hoards. She spent thousands of daylight hours observing them, collecting data for over five years.[12][13]: 133  Hallwachs demonstrated that agoutis provided an essential method of secondary seed dispersal, by harvesting seeds which are found on the forest floor and preferentially burying larger ones in shallow caches outside the area of the parent plant. It is hypothesized that such plant species have adapted to the presence of scatterhoarding animals over evolutionary time.[4][14]
: 329–331 

To meet the needs of their biodiversity development initiatives, Hallwachs deferred completion of her PhD for a number of years.

Pamela Parker as her thesis advisor. Her dissertation was In The Clumsy Dance Between Agoutis and Plants: Scatterhoarding by Costa Rican Dry Forest Agoutis (Dasyprocta punctata: Dasyproctidae: Rodentia) (1994, Cornell University).[15]

Biodiversity development work

In 1985, realizing that widespread development in northwestern Costa Rica was rapidly decimating the forest in which they conducted their research, Hallwachs and Janzen expanded the focus of their work. Their goal was to achieve tropical forest restoration, expansion (through land purchases) and conservation, while continuing their scientific research at a reduced level.[3][9]: 468 

They advocated for "biodiversity development" approaches[9]: 468  that could support social integration of humans with the environment, and non-damaging uses of biodiversity. Their work at ACG is considered an exemplar of inclusive conservation,[3] which emphasizes the connections between humans and nature in one ecosystem, and the involvement of local individuals in objectives for sustainability.[16]

Although Janzen has often received more attention, as the outgoing spokesperson of the team, he emphasizes that their contributions are equal.[9]

I see it more as we're two people, like Rodgers and Hammerstein, creating something; one of them thinks better, the other one plays the piano better. Or as I often put it, she thinks and I talk.

— Daniel Janzen[9]: 468 

Among the important ongoing initiatives that Hallwachs and Janzen have developed in the area are:

  • Caterpillar Inventory (1978–present)[9]: 470 [17]
  • Biodiversity Development (1985–present)[1][18]
  • Parataxonomist Program (1985–present)[19][20][21]
  • Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund (GDFCF) (1997–present)[1]
  • DNA Barcoding (2003–present)[9]: 471–475 [22]
  • BioAlfa bioliteracy project (2018–present)[19]

In 1978, when Hallwachs began to work there, the

Parque Nacional Santa Rosa
included 100 km2 (25,000 acres) of pasture and relictual neotropical dry forest and 230 km2 (57,000 acres) of marine habitat.[3] At that time it was the largest remaining area of dry tropical forest to be found in Mesoamerica.[8] Over time it has been expanded and joined with further areas. As of 2019, the ACG consists of 169,000 hectares (420,000 acres).[23] Hallwachs and Janzen have donated most of the award money that they have received to the expansion and maintenance of the ACG.[3][24][25][8] The resulting national park connects habitats from the tops of volcanoes to the sea, including mid-elevation Caribbean rainforest as well as neotropical dry forest.[19] In 1999, ACG was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[2][3]

DNA barcoding initiative

The DNA barcoding initiative grew out of a meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2003. There Janzen and Hallwachs met Paul Hebert, a geneticist from the University of Guelph who proposed the identification of species using mitochondrial DNA.[2][26][22] Hebert focused on a section of 650 base pairs in the DNA sequence of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene.[9]: 471–475 

As of 2017, over 500,000 specimens representing more than 45,000 species from ACG had been barcoded using the

Astraptes fulgerator was not a single species, but ten species. The documented number of species of Lepidoptera in ACG has risen from 9,000 to 15,000 as a result of the barcoding analysis program.[2][27]

Hallwachs and Janzen support initiatives to gather DNA barcodes for all of the species in the world, through CBOL (Consortium for the Barcode of Life) and iBOL (International Barcode of Life).[28][29][30]

Educational initiatives

Hallwachs and Janzen have been active in training North American tropical biologists. In 1965, Janzen designed an eight-week course for the Organization for Tropical Studies that has been taken by the majority of North American graduate students in tropical biology, and continues to be taught. During their class, students are hosted at ACG.[8]

Hallwachs and Janzen are also engaged in the education of local children, using the area as a "living classroom" to promote both understanding and a sense of pride and guardianship.[9]: 468–469  ACG has served as a demonstration site for students learning about ecological restoration and the conservation of the tropical dry forest since the 1980s.[10]

In addition, they are deeply involved in the training and employment of Costa Ricans as field researchers.[8] Since 1985, Hallwachs and Janzen have helped to train and work with resident parataxonomists, community‐based biodiversity inventory specialists who collect and process specimens and catalog biodiversity data.[7][21] In an intentional initiative to redress gender imbalance, this has included the training and employment of women.[31][5] Some women work with a husband as a partner, while others work independently.[32]

In November 2017, Hallwachs gave the keynote address "Conservation, Onychorhynchus, and Female Parataxonomists" at the XXI Congress for the Mesoamerican Society for Biology and Conservation. She emphasized the importance of women working as parataxonomists.[33][34][35]

Insect species named in honor of Hallwachs

Lathecla winnie (Lycaenidae),[36] courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution

Several insect species have been named in honor of Winnie Hallwachs including:

Awards

  • 1993, Award for Improvement of Costa Rican Quality of Life, Universidad de Costa Rica (co award with D. Janzen).[13]
  • 2003, Award to Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund, Wege Foundation (co award with D. Janzen)[1]
  • 2006, Winner, National Outdoor Book Awards (NOBA), for 100 Caterpillars: Portraits from the Tropical Forests of Costa Rica (2006), Design & Artistic Merit Category.[49]

Selected works

Books co-authored

  • Miller, J.C.; Janzen, D.H.; Hallwachs, W. (2006). 100 Caterpillars: Portraits from the Tropical Forests of Costa Rica. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    ISBN 9780674023345
    .     264 pp.
  • Miller, J.C.; Janzen, D.H.; Hallwachs, W. (2007). 100 Butterflies and Moths: Portraits from the Tropical Forests of Costa Rica. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    ISBN 9780674023345
    . 256 pp.

Book chapters

Scientific publications

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Van Putten, Mark; Palola, Eric (December 4, 2013). "Wege Foundation - Commitment to Costa Rican Biodiversity Protection Through Biodiversity Development" (PDF). Wege Foundation. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  2. ^
    PMID 28893992
    .
  3. ^
    S2CID 4387383
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 90-5808-777-8
    .
  5. ^ a b c Kazmier, Robin (June 15, 2017). "The Parataxonomist Revolution: How a Group of Rural Costa Ricans Discovered 10,000 New Species". Comparative Media Studies: Science Writing.
  6. ISBN 0-915825-89-9
    . Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  7. ^
    S2CID 154090258
    .
  8. ^
    ISBN 9781592371198
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 9781107115378
    . Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  10. ^
    S2CID 219193472
    . Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  11. ^ Kelly, B. Rose (August 22, 2017). "Orange is the new green: How orange peels revived a Costa Rican forest". Princeton University News. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
  12. ISBN 978-0851998060
    .
  13. ^
    ISBN 978-0195161779
    .
  14. ISBN 9780226278933
    .
  15. ^ Hallwachs, Winifred (1994). The Clumsy Dance Between Agoutis and Plants: Scatterhoarding by Costa Rican Dry Forest Agoutis (Dasyprocta punctata: Dasyproctidae: Rodentia. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University.
  16. PMID 27334309
    .
  17. PMID 21857894
    .
  18. S2CID 144814358
    .
  19. ^ a b c Bazilchuk, N. (July 6, 2019). "Planting the seeds for a bioliterate tropical country". Norwegian SciTech News. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  20. ^ Franzen, Jonathan (April 6, 2015). "Carbon capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  21. ^
    doi:10.1111/j.1365-2664.2004.00879.x
    .
  22. ^ a b Halloway, M. (July 29, 2008). "Democratizing Taxonomy". Conservation magazine. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  23. ^ "ACG Biodiversity". Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund. Retrieved October 24, 2019.
  24. ^ Avril, Tom (August 12, 2013). "Penn couple's biggest legacy: A forest in Costa Rica". The Philadelphia Inquirer.
  25. ^ Cepelewics, Jordana (December 29, 2016). "Spark of Science: Rob Pringle The Princeton ecologist tells us about the scientists who inspired his work". Nautilus. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  26. doi:10.1111/j.1526-4629.2006.tb00200.x
    . Retrieved November 2, 2019.
  27. PMID 15465915
    .
  28. ^ "Koerner Lecture to examine conservation of wild biodiversity via biodiversity development". York University. March 20, 2017. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  29. doi:10.21083/ibol.v9i1.5526
    .
  30. ^ Wolf, G. (September 22, 2008). "A Simple Plan to ID Every Creature on Earth". Wired. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  31. ^ Janzen, D. H.; Hallwachs, W. (1992). "Training parataxonomists for Costa Rica's national biodiversity inventory: the experiences of the first female course". Report to the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio).
  32. ^ Arroyo, César (December 8, 2018). "Petrona Ríos: Stocktaker of Guanacaste's Forest". The Voice of Guanacaste. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  33. ^ Butcher, Greg (September 1, 2017). "PIF VI – International Conference Announcement". Partners in Flight. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  34. ^ "Plenary speakers". XXI Congress of the Mesoamerican Society for Biology and Conservation and VI International Conference of Partners in Flight. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  35. ^ Zendejas, Cynthia Arochi. "New Developments In Conservation". Global Vision International. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  36. ^
    doi:10.1163/1876312X-45032115
    .
  37. ^ Clarke, J.F.G. (1983). "A new species of Eomichla from Costa Rica (Oecophoridae)". Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society. 37 (2): 155–159.
  38. ^ Gauld, I.D. (1988). "A survey of the Ophioninae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) of tropical Mesoamerica with special reference to the fauna of Costa Rica". Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History). 57: 1–309.
  39. S2CID 82683163
    . Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  40. ^ "winifredae {species} - Arthropoda; Insecta; Lepidoptera; Saturniidae; Hemileucinae; Hemileucini; Paradirphia;". Bold Systems. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  41. ^ "Paradirphia winifredae". International Barcode of Life Project. 2009. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  42. ^ Miller, J.S.; Janzen, D.H.; Franclemont, J.G. (1997). "New species of Euhapigiodes, new genus, and Hapigiodes in Hapigiini, new tribe, from Costa Rica, with notes on their life history and immatures (Lepidoptera: Notodontidae)" (PDF). Tropical Lepidoptera Research. 8 (2): 81–99. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  43. doi:10.1163/187631297X00295
    .
  44. ^ Pitkin, L.M. (1993). "Neotropical emerald moths of the genera Nemoria, Lissochlora and Chavarriella, with particular reference to the species of Costa Rica (Lepidoptera: Geometridae, Geometrinae)". Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Entomology. 62 (2): 39–159. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  45. ^ "Taxonomy Browser: Nemoria winniae". BOLD Systems. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  46. ^ Brechlin, R.; Meister, F. (2011). "Four new taxa of the genus Eacles Hübner, 1819 [1816] (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae)". Entomo-satsphingia. 4 (2): 94–99.
  47. ^ "Barcode Index Number Registry For BOLD:ACF5157". BOLD SYSTEMS. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  48. ^ "Lathecla winnie". iNaturalist. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  49. ^ "Design & Artistic Merit Category: National Outdoor Book Awards (NOBA)". The Guide to Outdoor Literature. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
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