by Ela Schwartz
What do you envision when you hear the word “shore”? Most likely a sandy beach with splashing waves, not a salt marsh. But look through the eyes of Matthias Foellmer, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, and you’ll see that these areas are the homes of a myriad of life forms: marsh grasses stirred by breezes, mussels exposed in the low tide and migratory birds stopping by to grab a meal before continuing on their way inland. Look closer and you’ll see the many species of what Dr. Foellmer refers to as “small animal biomasses you can hardly see, like crabs, insects and spiders.”
Known as arthropods, these creatures are a specialty of Dr. Foellmer, who is leading students in research that examines the influences of humans on invertebrate populations in wetlands along the South Shore of Long Island.
He explains that what makes Long Island’s salt marshes unique is that they are “isolated and disturbed.” Suburban sprawl has decimated the swaths of salt marshes once prevalent on our coasts. The result is secluded patches where these tiny creatures cannot travel from one habitat to another. Concurrently, these patches are being damaged by pollution due to their proximity to densely populated urban/ suburban developments.
One of Dr. Foellmer’s undergraduate students, Carolyn Trietsch ’12, extensively surveyed three isolated salt marsh patches still attached to the mainland. She and Dr. Foellmer used pitfall traps, beat sheets and sweep nets to whisk insects from vegetation. In Summer 2011, Ms. Trietsch even received a stipend from Adelphi’s McDonell Fellowship to pursue this research with Dr. Foellmer. “We are still in the process of identifying these creatures in the lab,” he says. After this phase is completed, Ms. Trietsch, now a master’s candidate at Adelphi, will analyze the data. Hypotheses to explore include the possibility of differences in genetic structure in populations or identifying ones that are extinct in one patch but not in others.
Another of Dr. Foellmer’s students, Andrew Vacca, M.S. ’12, analyzed the effects of heavy metal bioaccumulation in invertebrate food webs consisting of plants, small insects and wolf spiders. “What he found is that wolf spiders heavily accumulate methylmercury, which is highly toxic,” Dr. Foellmer explains. Toxicity can lead to neurological, behavioral and reproductive impairments. Despite his own fascination with spiders, he is well aware that they don’t make the best poster children to inspire most of us to be more environmentally conscious. But what about the birds who prey upon the spiders? “The accumulation of mercury in spiders is a threat to them as well as the animals that eat them,” he says, “and other studies have shown that semi-aquatic wolf spiders are the means by which aquatic methylmercury can move up to terrestrial food webs.”
This piece appeared in the Erudition 2013 edition.
