Program: GS-2021A-Q-234

Galaxy evolution is known to be driven by mass and environment, where the impact of the latter is expected to be more acute for dwarf galaxies due to their shallow potential wells. Within the context of massive galaxy clusters, the typical picture of dwarf galaxy evolution posits mildly star-forming dwarf irregulars (dIrrs) from the field being rapidly depleted of cold gas upon infall by external forces like ram pressure stripping and subsequently transforming into passive dwarf ellipticals (dEs). However, results on the globular cluster systems and ages and alpha-abundances of dEs in the Virgo cluster are more aligned with theoretical work which argues that those that fell in at early times had a more concentrated and bursty star formation history due to galaxy assembly bias and environmentally-induced starbursts. Unfortunately, the current sample of Virgo dEs with intermediate signal-to-noise spectroscopy (sufficient to measure ages and alpha-abundances, free of nuclear contamination), is too small to meaningful compare against simulations of galaxy clusters. We therefore request 20.7 h with GMOS-South to more than double the sample of Virgo dEs with spectroscopically-measured stellar populations to constrain the role of assembly bias and starbursts in building the galaxy content of this benchmark cluster.