Introduction

I was not born to be a field biologist. In fact, I wasn’t born to be a biologist. I grew up in a residential area of Long Beach, California in the ’50s. As a boy, I liked sports (baseball, squash, gymnastics). In junior high school, I discovered the adventure and natural beauty of hiking and backpacking in mountains and deserts. I gradually realized that I felt at home in natural landscapes, but I hadn’t yet discovered biology as a science.

In high school and early college, I was very good at most subjects but exceptional at none. When considering career options, I immediately vetoed business and law but did consider medicine, dentistry, and engineering. I was never especially interested in these professions but knew I needed to pick one. Medicine seemed the least offensive of the bunch: it was a prestigious profession and would enable a comfortable (if busy) life. But honestly, I was not interested in medicine as a science or in helping (or being around) sick people.

I occasionally considered non-professional careers. In early college, I wanted to be a concert pianist, but I quickly learned I am ‘a-musical’ (see 60  Variations on the Rashomon effect). In grad school, I enjoyed working with wood and its textures. I considered becoming a cabinet maker, but I soon discovered that I’m also three-dimensionally challenged. I never mastered the concept of ‘measure twice, cut once.’ Motivation is a necessary but not a sufficient trait for success.

As you will have undoubtedly notice, becoming a professor was never on my list of potential careers. I knew professors, of course, but I did not consider becoming one until late in my senior year in college.

Fortunately for me, biology – as an avocation and a career – did happen along the way, thanks to good luck and encounters with inspiring professors, great fellow students, and treasured collaborators. The official start of my biological career was inadvertent and occurred when I transferred from Deep Springs College to UC Berkeley in January 1964. Because I was transferring as a junior, the Registrar insisted that I declare a major. Zoology was at the bottom of the list of majors. However, it seemed like a good choice, simply because some Zoology courses (e.g., physiology, anatomy) would be background for medical school.

Nevertheless, I knew little about zoology because I had not taken biology in high school or at Deep Springs. In retrospect, I am glad I did not. Dave Campbell, one the most brilliant people I have ever known, took biology in our high school and got a C for his drawing of a flower. Dave, who had probably never gotten a grade less than an A or A+ in his life, asked the teacher why he had received a low grade, as he had labeled the flower parts properly. The teacher replied, “The flower looks dead.” Dave responded, “But it was dead!” Not surprisingly, Dave went into physics and chemistry, not into biology. High school biology circa 1960 must have been intellectually dull.

I eventually earned an A.B. with Honors in Zoology (University of California, Berkeley), later an M.A. in Zoology (University of Texas, Austin), and a Ph.D. in Biology (Harvard University). Next, I was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow (University of California, Berkeley). From there, I was hired as an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle (1977), where I worked my way up the academic ladder to Associate in 1980 and to full Professor in 1984. I retired as an Emeritus Professor in 2014. My major honors include a Miller Research Fellowship, J. S. Guggenheim Fellowship, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, President American Society of Naturalists, Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, President’s Award from the American Society of Naturalists (best paper of the year), and Board of Reviewing Editors Science. I’ve published over 200 papers or chapters, which have been cited over 47,000 times. I fell from grace only for four years, when I served as Acting Chair of Zoology and later as Chair of Biology.

Over the decades, I’ve shared research experiences with many remarkable scientists, some of whom started as mentors or collaborators and soon became friends, and others started as my students and then became friends and collaborators. Some students later grew to become new mentors for me. The few academics I prefer to avoid can be numbered on the fingers of one hand (I’m told I am unusually tolerant, but perhaps I am just oblivious to difficult personalities).

Academia has been and is a significant aspect of my life. I like academia as it fits my personality. I get to choose topic to research, and I work with bright and motivated people who enjoy thinking and who delight in solving problems and puzzles. Other professions undoubtedly attract people with those same qualities and present similar challenges and opportunities, but academia is the only profession I know in person. It works for me.

Biology is about exploring the living world around us. That world might be in a remote desert or on a microscope slide. Most biologists today work only in a lab or behind a computer. I have done both, but my heart is in the field or on the computer. I have also done lab work: I usually find it repetitive and tedious, and I do it only when necessary.

Biology has enabled my field research in México, Costa Rica, Peru, the Kalahari Desert (Botswana, South Africa, Namibia), Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Australia, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, and even southern Texas. Those field trips were not always fun or productive, but always memorable and invigorating.

This book compiles a series of sketches about encounters and experiences that were – or later became – important to my evolution as a biologist. These sketches highlight organisms, field sites, fellow biologists, and life (or academic) lessons.