Emma Waltman
2023 - 2026 FFAR Fellow
Introduction
The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) is pleased to announce the sixth cohort of graduate students to be accepted to the FFAR Fellows Program.
Emma Waltman is a doctoral student at Rutgers University and was selected as a FFAR Fellow studying Ecology and Evoluton.
Keep reading to learn more about Emma's research and why she applied to be a FFAR Fellow.
About Me
Hometown: Hopewell, New Jersey, USA
From a young age, I knew I wanted to study and protect the environment. My father worked as an environmental lobbyist in Washington, D.C. during my early childhood, then he took a job in New Jersey to run a non-profit devoted to protecting natural land and clean water. I spent summers at the organization’s nature camp catching macroinvertebrates in streams and searching for detritivores under decomposing logs, both as a camper and then as a counselor. When I learned about climate change, land degradation, and other anthropogenic threats to the environment at camp and in school, I felt compelled to protect the natural world I had come to love.
I knew that I wanted to pursue environmental work when I started college, but I didn’t know which specialty would suit me best. As an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), I sought opportunities in both the ecological sciences and environmental policy. I worked in two different ecology labs at WashU, a forest biodiversity research group and a disease ecology lab. I also had the opportunity to travel abroad for a semester to South Africa and work on a variety of ecological field projects in Kruger National Park.
While developing an affinity for scientific research, I also sought courses and experiences in environmental policy. Namely, I worked for the WashU Climate Change Program (WUCCP). One of my responsibilities was to support my supervisor as she served as a Focal-Point to an NGO Constituency to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and I attended a UNFCCC conference, “COP24." I observed delegates negotiate policies about accounting for carbon emissions on farms and attended panels about innovative solutions in agriculture, like agrivoltaics, or the coupling of solar energy farms with crop cultivation or livestock grazing.
Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to be a researcher, not policymaker, but I believe that research alone is insufficient to confront massive environmental problems. At COP24, I witnessed how science can inform policy first-hand, and I became inspired to pursue applied science and communicate my findings to policymakers, myself. I am specifically interested in agriculture because of the vast potential for innovation in the sector to address climate change and other global threats, like food insecurity. My ultimate career goals are to i) conduct applied agricultural research to refine ecologically informed, sustainable management strategies, and ii) to advocate for the adoption of such strategies by communicating with policymakers and growers.
Why the FFAR Fellowship?
I do not know if my career path will ultimately lead to a job in academia, government, an NGO, or industry, as I am currently open to all possibilities. However, I do know that I want to be a principal researcher who works directly with growers and collaborators across disciplinary silos to advance ecologically responsible agricultural practices. Participation in the FFAR Fellows program will help me decide which sector may be best suited for me, as the program will introduce me to mentors in different public and private organizations. Furthermore, as a fellow, I will build collaborative relationships with other early career professionals in the program whom I might not otherwise meet due to geographic or disciplinary barriers.
Furthermore, FFAR’s commitment to building collaborations between organizations and experts with differing expertise and priorities is inspiring. I know that the FFAR Fellows program will help me learn how large-scale collaborations operate successfully. This is important to me, as I value interdisciplinary problem solving and want to be involved in innovative collaborations throughout my career. In addition, the program will offer me opportunities to reflect and recognize my personal strengths during fellow retreats and webinars. I need to know what my strengths are in order to understand how I can best contribute to innovative projects focused on securing a sustainable agriculture future.
My Research
The brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) is an invasive insect pest of many crops, including tree fruit, and outbreaks have led to a four-fold increase in insecticide use in Mid-Atlantic peach orchards. I began my PhD focusing on BMSB and its co-evolved parasitoid wasp, Trissolcus japonicus (TJ), in Dr. Anne Nielsen’s lab at Rutgers. I tested if releasing this parasitoid into buckwheat, a flowering insectary plant, adjacent to peach orchards improves its performance as a biological control agent, or an organism that is purposely introduced to kill a pest. While I did not find that buckwheat improved TJ’s parasitism performance, I did make some key observations in the field that motivated my next research project. First, many of the BMSB eggs that I deployed and monitored in the orchard were either predated by egg predators or parasitized by other parasitoid wasps if not parasitized by TJ. Second, I observed other stink bug species in the orchard and, on one occasion, saw TJ attempt to parasitize their eggs.
Moving forward, I am studying broader stink bug, parasitoid, and predator communities in New Jersey peach orchards and the role that landscape plays in their assembly. Specifically, I am investigating if different landscape factors—including crop diversity, floral resource availability, and percent of the surrounding landscape that is forested— predict abundances of BMSB and two native stink bugs, a pest and beneficial predator, and the effect of natural enemies on the stink bug species’ eggs. I am working on 15 different NJ farms with peaches for this project. To monitor stink bugs, I deploy pheromone-baited traps and do sweep and beat sampling. To monitor enemy-associated egg mortality, I raise the three species of stink bugs in colonies, collect their eggs, deploy them on farms, collect them, allow for stink bug nymphs and parasitoids to emerge, and then classify each egg by fate (predated, nymph hatch, parasitoid hatch, etc.). All eggs with unknown fates are collected for PCR and DNA barcoding analysis to recognize unsuccessful parasitism, or when a parasitoid wasp lays an egg in a stink bug egg, but no stink bug or parasitoid successfully emerges.
I expect that crop diversity, floral resource availability, and percent forest/meadow in the surrounding area of the peach blocks will be positively correlated with enemy-associated egg mortality of stink bug eggs. These findings would inform growers how they can couple landscape and agricultural management to maximize ecological control of stink bug pests.
My research aims to reduce insecticide use associated with stink bug pests. This aligns with grower priorities and complements the FFAR Challenge Areas of soil health, sustainable water management, the health-agriculture nexus, and next generation crops. Insecticidal residues have negative impacts on soil biodiversity, decomposition, respiration, and nutrient cycling. These residues also enter surface and groundwaters via runoff and leaching with little to no successful remediation efforts currently identified. Furthermore, human health, especially health of growers and farmworkers who are most exposed to insecticides, is most protected when ecologically minded pest control is implemented. Lastly, my research supports FFAR’s vision of next generation crops, as I hypothesize that crop diversity will correlate with high ecological control of stink bug pests, providing incentive for farmers to diversify their crops.
Sponsor
I’m proud to be the first FFAR fellow representing New Jersey, aka the ‘Garden State,’ and this is possible because the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University is sponsoring my participation as a FFAR Fellow. Before I was a graduate student, I worked as an agricultural scout for Rutgers Cooperative Extension’s Fruit Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Program, where growers pay to have scouts monitor insect pest and disease levels on their farm and receive appropriate management recommendations from extension agents. I started as a PhD student a year after I worked as a scout, and I now do my fieldwork on the very farms I scouted three years ago.
I will also have the ability to connect with non-university mentors in the FFAR fellowship program. Currently, I am unfamiliar with the private sector, and I am excited by this opportunity to broaden my career horizons.
More About Me
In college, I earned a minor in visual arts in my university’s art school. I like illustration, painting, photography, and mixed media collage, and gravitate toward nature-inspired pieces. Apart from doing art, my hobbies include backpacking/hiking, looking for insects, playing soccer and ultimate frisbee, watching movies and tv shows, and cooking. I’ve also volunteered with a number of political campaigns by canvassing and phone-banking, including the Elizabeth Warren, Cori Bush, and Phil Murphy campaigns.
