Janet Mary Wilmshurst (born 1966) is a New Zealand palaeoecologist who works on reconstructing the ecological past. Wilmshurst has been a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi since 2015. She was president of the New Zealand Ecological Society, and currently works as principal scientist in long-term ecology at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research focusing on recent fossil records to reconstruct and trace past ecosystem changes in response to natural disturbance.

Education

Born in

Andover, Hampshire Andover ( ) is a town in the Test Valley district of Hampshire, England. The town is on the River Anton, a major tributary of the River Test, Test, and lies alongside the major A303 road, A303 trunk road at the eastern end of Salisbury Plain, ...

, England, in 1966, Wilmshurst earned a BSc in environmental science at the

University of Plymouth The University of Plymouth is a public research university based predominantly in Plymouth, England, where the main campus is located, but the university has campuses and affiliated colleges across South West England. With students, it is the ...

in 1988. She then completed a PhD at the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury (UC; ; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was founded in 1873 as Canterbur ...

in 1995, with a thesis titled ''A 2000 year history of vegetation and landscape change in Hawke's Bay, North Island, New Zealand'', supervised by Vida Stout and Matt McGlone.

Research

Wilmshurst's research focuses on the use of different fossil types to explore ecological history. Her research has employed a variety of samples including fossilised dung, seeds, pollen, and charcoal. She has worked on fire disturbance, human settlement and other impacts on past ecosystems. Wilmshurst obtained a

Marsden grant Marsden Fund grants are contestable funding for investigator-led fundamental research in New Zealand. Grants are made in all areas of research in science, engineering, and mathematics. The grants are made from the Marsden Fund, which was establish ...

to work with Atholl Anderson, Thomas Higham and Trevor Worthy to explore Polynesian settlement throughout New Zealand and the Pacific using carbon dating of rat-gnawed seeds. This work established that rats were widespread in New Zealand from ''circa'' 1280, but were not found before this date, and was at odds with earlier dates for rat arrival of up to 1000 years earlier, inferred from dating of rat bones. Wilmshurst used fossilised gizzards and moa

coprolites A coprolite (also known as a coprolith) is fossilized feces. Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour (in this case, diet) rather than morphology. The name i ...

to explore the diet of the extinct little bush moa in

Fiordland National Park Fiordland National Park is a national park in the south-west corner of South Island of New Zealand. It is the largest of the 13 National parks of New Zealand, national parks in New Zealand, with an area covering , and a major part of the Te W� ...

, in a study in which fossilised "poo paints a picture of the past". Wilmshurst and her team showed that little bush moa dispersed few seeds via dung, unlike other moa species. Wilmshurst was president of the New Zealand Ecological Society in 2001/2002, and currently works as principal scientist in long-term ecology at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research.

Honours and awards

In 2013, Wilmshurst won the "Te Tohu Taiao Award for Ecological Excellence", conferred by the New Zealand Ecological Society. Wilmshurst won the New Zealand Ecological Society's "Outstanding Publication on New Zealand Ecology" award in 2016 for her paper ''Use of pollen and ancient DNA as conservation baselines for offshore islands in New Zealand,'' published in ''

Conservation Biology Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an i ...

''. Wilmshurst was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society Te Apārangi The Royal Society Te Apārangi (in full, Royal Society of New Zealand) is a not-for-profit body in New Zealand providing funding and policy advice in the fields of sciences and the humanities. These fundings (i.e., Marsden grants and research fe ...

in 2015.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilmshurst, Janet 1966 births Living people People from Andover, Hampshire Alumni of the University of Plymouth British emigrants to New Zealand University of Canterbury alumni New Zealand ecologists Women ecologists Recipients of Marsden grants New Zealand women scientists Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand