Meet ZEN student fellow, Rachel

July 13th, 2012Blog0 comments

Rachel Gittman

by Rachel Gittman (ZEN exchange student fellow, Southern Japan site)

If someone told me this time last year that I would be traveling to Japan this summer to study amphipods and 3-meter tall Zostera marina, I wouldn’t have believed it. My reason for not believing such a scenario is not because I couldn’t see myself traveling to Japan, or because I didn’t think that seagrass could grow 3m tall, but because I couldn’t imagine studying amphipods. As a former lab mate of Dr. Pamela Reynolds, the post-doctoral researcher coordinating the ZEN project, I received an intense introduction to the world of mesograzers during my first year of graduate school. I swore to her that I would never study amphipods because they were just too small. Yet here I am, working with those amazing little crustaceans for the third consecutive year. I guess “never say never” is a lesson I have yet to learn.

Rachel (left) samples cages for the 2011 ZEN experiments in North Carolina

Before I go further with my expectations for my encounters with Japanese amphipods this summer, here is some background on me. I am a third year PhD candidate in the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences. My graduate advisors are Dr. John Bruno and Dr. Charles “Pete” Peterson. As a marine community ecologist, I am broadly interested in the biotic and abiotic factors that affect the structure and functioning of marine communities.

Rachel installed cages to study how ecosystem engineers affect marsh health

My dissertation work focuses on how two anthropogenic stressors, coastal development and sea level rise, can affect coastal habitats. More specifically, through fish community sampling and field experiments I evaluate how artificial shoreline stabilization and increased tidal inundation (a result of sea level rise) can affect the composition and persistence of coastal fish and invertebrate communities that utilize salt marsh, oyster reef, and seagrass habitats. My research often requires me to sample fish at night, trudge through dense, mosquito-infested marsh to survey the plant communities, and count and often tag many a periwinkle, fiddler crab, and other interesting marine invertebrate.

Life outside of graduate school
When I am not knee-deep in a muddy salt marsh collecting fish, I somehow manage to still enjoy being outside by running, swimming, kayaking, and walking my dogs. I also enjoy yoga, cooking, gardening, and just in case I don’t already sound a bit older than I actually am, even knitting. When I find the time to get away, I like to check out local music and restaurants, as well as escape a few times a year to the Appalachian Mountains to camp and hike.

Concern for habitat forming species unites us all

Rachel used plastic tubes and wooden                      rods to create artificial marsh grass habitat

Although my dissertation work has a very different focus than the ZEN objectives, ultimately they both revolve around understanding the factors that affect the health and persistence of foundation species (e.g., the eelgrass Z. marina, marsh cordgrass Spartina alterniflora, and the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica) that provide critical habitat for marine organisms. It is this parallel that first interested me in the ZEN project and continues to drive my participation in the network. I have been working with the ZEN partners as the North Carolina site coordinator since 2011. I am very excited to expand my participation in the ZEN project by traveling to both Hiroshima and Akkeshi, Japan, this summer to assist fellow researchers with this amazing project.

One of Rachel’s field sites in North Carolina

My primary expectation for this project is that I cannot know what to expect, which is very exciting. I imagine that the seagrass beds in Japan will be very different from those in North Carolina, which I am sure will pose unanticipated challenges, but also unexpected insights into the dynamic relationships between mesograzers, their predators, and the in-common foundation species Zostera. I am looking forward to working with the Japanese researchers and learning more about Japan’s ecosystems.