Program: GN-2013A-Q-76

IFU spectroscopy for a large, unbiased sample of early-type galaxies (ETGs) in the local volume (ATLAS3D) has revolutionized our understanding of their structure, dynamics, stellar populations and morphology. However, this survey was carried out with a 4m-class telescope (WHT), so it reaches only to a galaxy mass of ~5 billion solar masses. In other words, the state-of-the-art ETG sample does not contain even a single galaxy in the low-mass regime, despite the fact that such systems dominate galaxy numbers in all environments. We propose to continue our GMOS IFU survey -- begun in 2012A -- of a nearly complete sample of low-mass, compact galaxies in the Virgo cluster that have been selected from our Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. The nature of such galaxies is currently a subject of hot debate within the comunity, being viewed as either: (1) the lowest-mass, E-type systems that formed via hierarchical merging and violent relaxation, or (2) the tidally-stripped remains of what were initially much more massive systems. Once completed, our GMOS survey will provide a clear test of these scenarios by yielding 2D maps of velocity, velocity dispersion, age, [Z/H] and [alpha/Fe] for nearly complete sample of low-mass, compact galaxies within the virial radius of the Virgo cluster.