Karen Lips
Alma materUniversity of South Florida, BS, 1988
University of Miami, PhD, 1995
Known forContributing to the identification of chytridiomycosis and advocacy efforts in environmental conservation
Scientific career
FieldsEcology, Herpetology, Conservation
InstitutionsSt. Lawrence University
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
University of Maryland, College Park
ThesisThe population biology of Hyla calypsa, a stream-breeding treefrog from lower Central America (1995)
Doctoral advisorJay M. Savage
WebsiteResearch website

Karen R. Lips is a Professor of Biology at University of Maryland, College Park. Lips' work in the 1990s eventually contributed to the identification of the chytrid fungus as the primary cause of frog decline worldwide.

Education and early career

Lips received her Bachelor of Science in zoology from University of South Florida in 1988. She then spent a year researching at the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica through their program Tropical Biology: An Ecological Approach. In 1995, she received her PhD in Biology at University of Miami in the research group of herpetologist Jay M. Savage.[1] Her doctoral research centered on studying the population ecology of Isthmohyla calypsa—a tree frog found only in the Talamancan mountains—in the Reserva Protectora Las Tablas in Costa Rica. She moved to the region in 1991 and by 1993 observed that the population of these frogs had declined dramatically. She documented their population dynamics and breeding patterns in her dissertation, The population biology of Hyla calypsa, a stream-breeding treefrog from lower Central America.[2] During her graduate work, she also documented the disappearance of the toad Incilius fastidiosus, on the heals of the mysterious extinction of the golden toad.[3] While she initially did not have an explanation for the disappearances she'd observed, her graduate work—combined with the observations of a number of amphibian ecologists—eventually contributed to the identification of chytridiomycosis, an infectious disease that has wiped out amphibian populations around the world.[4][5]

Research

Lips research primarily centers on understanding the ecological and environmental factors that influence how amphibian species respond to diseases in order to devise evidence-based strategies for conservation and recovery of endangered species. She and her collaborators also work to determine how human activities can contribute to the spread of diseases and the ultimate loss of biodiversity.[6]

Following her PhD, Lips became an Assistant Professor at St. Lawrence University between 1995 and 1998. In that position, she returned to Costa Rica in 1996 and observed the overall abundance of frogs in the region was down 90%.[3] Her observations echoed those documented at a number of other ecological sites where amphibians were mysteriously dying off over the previous 15 years.[4] While some of the population decline could be attributed to habitat destruction, the areas Lips was researching were untouched and relatively unexplored environments. She moved her field research site to Fortuna, Costa Rica where she and her colleagues, including Rick Speare, found dead and dying frogs. They collected 50 dead frogs to send back to a veterinary pathologist in Maryland, who discovered that a protozoan of some sort had infiltrated their skin. With a team of collaborators, the protozoan was eventually identified as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, which belongs to a phylum of fungus called chytrids.[7][8] Amphibians drink and breathe by absorbing water and oxygen through their skin, but chytrids grow all over their bodies and interfere with their blood chemistry, leading to organ failure and eventual death. Since Bd was identified, it's been implicated in the collapse or extinction of over 200 amphibian species.[8]

Between 1998 and 2008, Lips was an Assistant, and later Associate, Professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. In 2004, her graduate students observed and began documenting a new chytrid outbreak in El Copé, Panama.[9] In the wake of the outbreak, Lips and her colleagues in ecology and environmental conservation began evaluating the threat of such epidemics on biodiversity and discussing policy interventions.[10]

Starting in 2008, Lips became a Professor at University of Maryland, College Park, where she currently serves as the Director of the Graduate Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology. She also holds a Research Associate appointment at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and at the U.S. Museum of Natural History. In this position, she has studied the amphibian declines in several more regions, including those documented over the last 50 years in the Appalachian Mountains in collaboration with her colleague Dick Highton.[11] Her research group and collaborators have also observed and documented the spread of chytrids to salamander populations, which are infected by a species related to Bd known as Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, or Bsal.[12] The exotic pet trade has been implicated in the spread of Bsal, and Lips and her colleagues successfully advocated for banning salamander import into the United States.[13][14]

Advocacy and public engagement

Between 2016 and 2017, Lips served in the United States Department of State as a Jefferson Science Fellow in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs in the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.[6] There, her portfolio centered on issues related to environmental science, climate change, implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, STEM education, and increasing representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. She also traveled to posts across Latin America and the Caribbean to meet with decision makers, leaders in science, and educators to discuss science and education.

Lips has also engaged in science communication. She wrote about her early experiences in amphibian conservation as part of a special PLOS Biology collection “Conservation Stories from the Front Lines," which was curated in part by Liz Neeley, the Executive Director of the science-inspired storytelling nonprofit The Story Collider.[15][3][16] She published a similar account for Scientific American, advocating as well for the importance of science communication to raise awareness around issues of conservation.[17] She has also used her writing as a platform for advocacy, for instance, co-authoring a 2015 op-ed in The New York Times warning against the import of Asian salamanders through the pet trade to stop the spread of Bd to American salamanders.[18] The advocacy efforts of her and her colleagues led the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to ban the import of 201 salamander species under the authority of the Lacey Act, which went into effect January 2016.[19][20]

Her general publications about frogs inspired a German documentary film company, mobyDOK, to collaborate with her on a 16-minute animated film titled "The Waiting"[21] about the extinction of frog species due to the still unstoppable spread of the Chytrid fungus. The film was shown in competition in the short film programme at the 2023 Berlinale.[22]

Awards and honors

References

  1. ↑ "Karen Lips | Amphibians.org". Amphibian Survival Alliance. February 26, 2013. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
  2. ↑ Lips, Karen (January 1, 1995). "The population biology of Hyla calypsa, a stream-breeding treefrog from lower Central America". Dissertations from ProQuest.
  3. 1 2 3 Lips, Karen R. (February 6, 2018). "Witnessing extinction in real time". PLOS Biology. 16 (2): e2003080. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2003080. ISSN 1545-7885. PMC 5800534. PMID 29408868.
  4. 1 2 Blakeslee, Sandra (September 16, 1997). "New Culprit in Deaths of Frogs". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 22, 2018.
  5. ↑ Lips, Karen R. (December 5, 2016). "Overview of chytrid emergence and impacts on amphibians". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 371 (1709): 20150465. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0465. ISSN 0962-8436. PMC 5095542. PMID 28080989.
  6. 1 2 3 "Lips Bio". sites.nationalacademies.org. Retrieved December 22, 2018.
  7. ↑ Parkes, Helen; Marantelli, Gerry; Lips, Karen R.; Hines, Harry B.; McDonald, Keith R.; Hyatt, Alex D.; Ragan, Mark A.; Slocombe, Ron; Goggin, C. Louise (July 21, 1998). "Chytridiomycosis causes amphibian mortality associated with population declines in the rain forests of Australia and Central America". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 95 (15): 9031–9036. Bibcode:1998PNAS...95.9031B. doi:10.1073/pnas.95.15.9031. ISSN 1091-6490. PMC 21197. PMID 9671799.
  8. 1 2 Wade, Lizzie (July 30, 2015). "What It's Like to Watch a Species Go Extinct". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
  9. ↑ Collins, James P.; Pessier, Allan P.; Livo, Lauren; Carey, Cynthia; Voyles, Jamie; Alford, Ross A.; Reeve, John D.; Brenes, Roberto; Brem, Forrest (February 28, 2006). "Emerging infectious disease and the loss of biodiversity in a Neotropical amphibian community". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 103 (9): 3165–3170. Bibcode:2006PNAS..103.3165L. doi:10.1073/pnas.0506889103. ISSN 1091-6490. PMC 1413869. PMID 16481617.
  10. ↑ Brodie, Edmund D.; Wake, David B.; Crump, Martha L.; Griffiths, Richard A.; Dobson, Andy; Blaustein, Andrew R.; Lannoo, Michael J.; Boone, Michelle; Pethiyagoda, Rohan (July 7, 2006). "Confronting Amphibian Declines and Extinctions" (PDF). Science. 313 (5783): 48. doi:10.1126/science.1128396. ISSN 1095-9203. PMID 16825553. S2CID 82731991.
  11. ↑ "Scientists Say Amphibian Die-Offs Hit Area Years Ago". WAMU. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
  12. ↑ Pasmans, F.; Bossuyt, F.; Bocxlaer, I. Van; Kolby, J. E.; Nguyen, T. T.; Nishikawa, K.; Ducatelle, R.; Salvidio, S.; Sluijs, A. Spitzen-van der (October 31, 2014). "Recent introduction of a chytrid fungus endangers Western Palearctic salamanders". Science. 346 (6209): 630–631. Bibcode:2014Sci...346..630M. doi:10.1126/science.1258268. ISSN 1095-9203. PMC 5769814. PMID 25359973.
  13. ↑ Achenbach, Joel (May 10, 2018). "Exotic pet trade linked to invasive fungus that's killing frogs globally". The Washington Post.
  14. ↑ Revkin, Andrew C. (March 21, 2015). "Riled Herpetologists Press Obama Administration to Protect America's Salamanders from a Fungal Threat". Dot Earth Blog. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
  15. ↑ Neeley, Liz; Moore, Jonathan W.; Hettinger, Annaliese; Gross, Liza (February 5, 2018). "Conservation stories from the front lines". PLOS Biology. 16 (2): e2005226. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2005226. ISSN 1545-7885. PMC 5798755. PMID 29401208.
  16. ↑ Yeo, Sophie (June 5, 2018). "When Scientists Become Storytellers". Pacific Standard. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
  17. ↑ Lips, Karen. "What If There Is No Happy Ending? Science Communication as a Path to Change". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
  18. ↑ Lips, Karen R.; III, Joseph R. Mendelson (November 14, 2014). "Opinion | Stopping the Next Amphibian Apocalypse". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
  19. ↑ Resnick, Brian (December 10, 2015). "The US just banned salamander imports, hoping to stave off disaster". Vox. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
  20. ↑ "Injurious Wildlife: Listing Salamanders as Injurious Due to Risk of Salamander Chytrid Fungus". www.fws.gov. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
  21. ↑ "The Waiting". IMDb com. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
  22. ↑ "The Waiting". berlinale.de. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
  23. ↑ "Fellows Directory | Page 6 | Leopold Leadership Program". leopoldleadership.stanford.edu. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
  24. ↑ "2016–2017 Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement Fellows: Climate Change". American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved December 22, 2018.
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