Sally White – History Committee | Ecological Society of America

HRC July 2020 Newsletter

Sally White — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 15:32:07 +0000

Note: This newsletter is the last to be contributed by former HRC Chair Dr. Sharon Kingsland. We appreciate her efforts on behalf of ESA’s historical records.
Forty Years Ago: The Ecology of Infectious Diseases as an Emerging Field
By Sharon Kingsland, Newsletter Editor
The Resolution of Respect appearing in the October issue of the Bulletin reviews the extraordinary career of one of the most important theoretical ecologists of our time, Robert M. May, who died on April 28. As the authors of the Resolution note, May had at least five brilliant careers, starting with theoretical physics in Australia, then moving into ecological sciences with two distinguished academic appointments at Princeton and Oxford University, followed by a fourth career as chief science advisor to the UK government, and finally shifting to the study of the stability of financial systems. May liked to jump into relatively uncrowded fields, where opportunities existed to make important contributions. One of these fields in the 1970s was the ecology of infectious diseases, which May developed in the 1970s and 1980s in collaboration with Roy (later Sir Roy) M. Anderson, who is now Professor of Disease Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London.
May and Anderson met in the mid-1970s at Silwood Park, the field station of Imperial College about thirty miles from London. While on the faculty at Princeton University, May started spending the summers working at Silwood Park, where Richard Southwood had assembled a brilliant group of ecologists, with links to Oxford University, York University, and to Imperial College’s Centre for Environmental Technology (opened in 1976). Hannah Gay has written a study of the “Silwood circle,” and describes the creative synergies fostered among the ecologists there, which contributed to the expansion of ecology along many fronts. These synergies were fostered by the multi-disciplinary environment at Silwood; Gay’s book highlights especially the agricultural and medical problems studied there. In addition to entomology and ecology, Silwood had experts in tropical agriculture, agricultural pests and pest control, and parasitology. One of the many creative interactions at Silwood was the collaboration of May and Anderson, who created a body of theory in the 1970s and 1980s focused on the ecology of infectious diseases, including studies of emerging diseases such as HIV-AIDS.
May was trained in physics and mathematics and clearly perceived that his physicist’s perspective could offer something of value to ecology (May 1985). But he was also interested in ways that ecological methods could be extended to new kinds of problems, and he was quick to identify ways that ecology could enlarge its scope and applications, especially when it came to understanding pressing problems ranging from conservation of species to the spread of infectious diseases. Anderson was similarly interested in bringing different disciplines into communication with each other. He had done his Ph.D. at Imperial College in 1971 and then joined the faculty there, specializing in parasite ecology. As he noted, since he was trained in a university department that included both ecology and parasitology, the fact that he took an early interest in parasite ecology was no surprise (Anderson 1991). By the late 1960s and early 1970s, approaches and ideas coming from theoretical population ecology, including the work of Robert May, were starting to influence parasitology. As members of the Silwood Circle in the 1970s, May and Anderson embarked on a highly productive collaboration that was a model of creative synthesis of disciplines.
A two-part review article that they co-authored in 1979 on the population biology of infectious diseases gives insight into their interdisciplinary goals and desire to expand the way ecologists thought about their discipline (Anderson and May 1979; May and Anderson 1979). In analyzing host-parasite interactions, they defined “parasite” broadly to include viruses, bacteria, and protozoans, as well as the more conventional helminth and arthropod parasites, a definition that enabled them to engage with a large medical and epidemiological literature. That literature assumed that the host population had a constant value, an assumption that derived, as they explained, from the history of medical interest in human diseases, where population densities were roughly constant on the time scale appropriate to the pathology of most diseases. The ecological literature, on the other hand, suggested that parasites could depress or regulate the host population, analogous to the way that predators regulated prey populations. Weaving these two strands together, May and Anderson brought an ecological perspective to bear on the general problem of infectious diseases. “Our main goal,” they wrote, “is to help elevate the study of host-parasite population dynamics to its proper place in ecological thinking; parasites (broadly defined) are probably at least as important as the more usually-studied predators and insect parasitoids in regulating natural populations.” As Anderson (1991) later observed, ecology also had a lot to learn from epidemiology: “One of the major lessons epidemiology can teach ecology,” he wrote, “is the value of long-term data records of changes in organism abundance. Such data provides an excellent template against which to test ideas concerning the factors that determine population size.”
In a study of an important 1981 paper by Anderson and May that analyzed the population dynamics of microparasites and their hosts in greater detail, J. A. P. Heesterbeek and M. G. Roberts (2015) commented that relaxing the assumption of a constant host population was not only a “natural step” when coming to the problem from the ecological side, but it also “opened the way to asking new questions about infectious disease dynamics and studying a much richer set of observed phenomena. Once taken, these steps also turned out to be essential for understanding infectious disease dynamics in human populations.” Heesterbeek and Roberts also noted the importance of collaboration across disciplines: “In contrast to the situation so far where researchers worked mainly in isolation, Anderson and May collaborated in larger groups with biologists and mathematicians, thereby establishing and educating the first real generation of dedicated epidemiological modellers.”
While introducing a special issue on “Conservation and Disease” from a symposium held at the first annual meeting of the newly formed Society for Conservation Biology in the mid-1980s, May reflected on the lack of attention that ecologists had given to the way diseases could affect the distribution and abundance of animals and plants. The subject of disease ecology, he noted, was still largely missing from ecology textbooks. Ecologists tended to favor larger four and six-legged predators, the small size of pathogens made them hard to study, and veterinarians and wildlife managers focused on individual sick animals and not population dynamics. But times were changing, and he perceived an upsurge in interest in disease ecology. May also realized that the field he and Anderson had helped to develop had important consequences for conservation biology, especially the design of natural parks and refuges. It was highly appropriate that the Society should choose this topic for a symposium at its first annual meeting (published in Conservation Biology, 1988, vol. 2).
In an interview conducted in 2014 at an EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) Members Meeting in Heidelberg, Germany, May talked about how he approached the task of getting into fields at their early stages, when they were not too crowded, but where there were interesting problems that had not attracted as much attention as he thought they deserved. When he got into something new, it was his habit not to read too much about it at first, but to read just enough to get a grasp of the problem, and then think about how he would go about understanding it better. As he explained, he tried to learn about the “what” questions, but did not spend much effort on what were the tentative “why” questions. “If you read too much about what the current state of progress is, on both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, it will tend to channel your thinking. If you want to come to it from first principles and ask ‘what can we see there and why is it like that?’ it’s probably not a good idea to read up on what other people have said on that, until you’ve got to the point where you’ve had such ideas as you think might be useful. And then, if you’ve got any sense, you will turn round and carefully and thoughtfully and respectfully read all the things that other people have suggested about the ‘why’.” The last step was essential to determine if your ideas were really new. He added that some scientists working in the field of infectious diseases who were citing Anderson and May’s work, along with others’ work, appeared not to have read the publications they were citing! (Interview by Barry Whyte, “Part I. The practice of science: focus on Lord Robert May,” EMBO Excellence in Life Sciences channel on YouTube.)
Literature cited
Anderson, R.M. 1991. Populations and infectious diseases: ecology or epidemiology? J. Anim. Ecol. 60:1-50.
Anderson, R. M., and R. M. May. 1979. Population biology of infectious diseases: Part I. Nature 280:361-367.
Gay, Hannah. 2013. The Silwood Circle: a history of ecology and the making of scientific careers in late twentieth-century Britain. London: Imperial College Press.
Heesterbeek, J.A.P., and M.G. Roberts. 2015. How mathematical epidemiology became a field of biology: a commentary on Anderson and May (1981) ‘The population dynamics of microparasites and their invertebrate hosts. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B 370:2014007.
May, Robert M. 1986. The search for patterns in the balance of nature: advances and retreats. Ecology 67(5):1115-1126.
May, Robert M. 1988. Conservation and disease. Conservation Biology 2(1):28-30.
May, R. M., and R. M. Anderson. 1979. Population biology of infectious diseases: Part II. Nature 280:455-461.

History of Long-Term Ecology Research

Sally White — Mon, 04 May 2020 19:37:42 +0000

The latest HRC newsletter (April 2020) offers a look back in recognition of the 40th anniversary of LTER programming. Here’s the introduction:
The Long-Term Ecological Research Program turns Forty
2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. Initially described as a “pilot project” and an “experiment,” the program started modestly with only six sites in 1980, to which five more were added after a year. By 1987 five more sites joined the program, and three more in 1988, although two of the original sites were withdrawn in 1988. Some ecologists were unsure whether the program was a good idea, but NSF had high ambitions for its experiment. Research at these sites, it was hoped, would partly build on the biome studies conducted during the International Biological Program (1967-1974), but would take ecology to the next level of predictive, ecosystem-level science. Unsurprisingly, several early LTER projects did build directly on those biome studies, which focused on coniferous and deciduous forests, grasslands, deserts, and tundra. The LTER program now includes 26 sites, three of which were in the original group that began the program. A Symposium planned for the annual meeting in Salt Lake City will examine the scientific accomplishments of the LTER program.

The 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day also prompts reflections on the changes in ecology, and in the Ecological Society of America, over the past half century. We invite your participation in a symposium at the upcoming annual meeting, “Earth Day Plus Fifty,” featuring talks by Jane Lubchenco and Hal Mooney, Ann Bartuska, Margaret Palmer, and Laura Petes.

HRC Newsletters

Sally White — Mon, 04 May 2020 08:05:46 +0000

This is the last of the HRC newsletters prepared by Sharon Kingsland. Since April 2015, the following issues have been published:

Grace Brush and the Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem

Sally White — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 15:14:16 +0000

Grace Brush, January 18, 1931-
Education
1949 B.A., Economics, St. Xavier University
1951 M.S., Botany, University of Illinois (with Wilson Stewart)
1956 Ph.D. Paleobotany, Harvard University (with Elso Barghoorn)

Career Highlights
According to Dr. Brush’s 1988 letter to Dr. Jean Langenheim, her early career evolved through several fields:

“I graduated from college with a degree in Economics, which I liked alot; but the only job I could get after graduating was as a lab technician in a Geological Survey of Canada coal research laboratory. I did minor in Geology. The lab was very small—only a half dozen people. My job was to prepare polished sections of coal for petrographic study. But I became fascinated with the structure in the coal, and particularly with the spores. Because the laboratory was very small, it was possible for me to pursue this interest, which eventually led to my going to graduate school to become a paleobotanist. I studied first with Wilson Stewart at Illinois and eventually with Barghoorn. My interests have fluctuated between working on modern plant distributions and on the fossil distributions, so that my interests and work have gradually evolved into ecology and paleoecology. …

“My most important contribution to ecology so far [1988] has been the vegetation map of Maryland, which shows the close relationship between lithologies that are similar hydrologically and distributions of the natural forests. The work that my students and I are doing now on reconstructing estuarine history using the stratigraphic record is also providing interesting insights on the influence of man on the environment.” — Letter to J.H. Langenheim, 1988

Graduating from college (St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia) at 18, Dr. Brush has now spent four decades studying the ecology of the Chesapeake Bay and its connections to the forests around it. During one college geology class, she recalls:

…”we went on a field trip to the Joggins Fossil Cliffs on the Bay of Fundy side of Nova Scotia. This is a very famous fossil site, where a 3-million-year-old forest is exposed. There were these huge trees that looked like ferns and other plants like nothing we had ever seen. I think that that is when I began to subconsciously wonder how this area got from being a tropical place to what it is now—a land of spruce trees, maples, aspens.”

From 1957 to 1973, Dr. Brush worked part-time at several universities before moving to the Johns Hopkins Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering as a research scientist. In 1981, she became a full professor in the department and continues her career there.

As a woman in the late 1950s, she encountered challenges starting her career, as she reported in a 2014 interview:

…”Elso Barghoorn, a professor in the Biology Department at Harvard,… accepted me as a student. I was very lucky because at that time professors were not anxious to take on women as students. They assumed that they would not do much with their education, especially if married. The few women who did pursue graduate work very often ended up as unpaid assistants for their husbands.

“We would go wherever Lucien got a job. He first worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, then the University of Iowa, later Princeton, and in 1969 came to JHU. I followed a husband.

“…The reality of someone being excluded from all aspects of learning based on sex alone at Princeton, one of the great universities in the country, just did not make any sense and impressed on me the terrible injustice of racial discrimination, which I had certainly read about but did not experience or actually see. I had never lived in a large city.”
— Johns Hopkins University Gazette

Chesapeake Bay was considered “dying” in the 1970s, with declines in catches of the fish and oysters that supported the local economy. Dr. Brush untangled the changing ecology using pollen and sediment from core samples taken with generations of students and colleagues. “Brush pieced together evidence of the relationships between failing fisheries, river sediment, the sudden disappearance of underwater grasses, and a bay with a serious chemical imbalance.” (Finkbeiner, 2017.)

“We were able to show that the recent disappearance of the grasses was unique, and that sedimentation increased from four- to tenfold since Europeans began to cut down the forests and plant crops, and that nitrogen and phosphorus inputs into the estuary corresponded with the use of fertilizer on the land. … These studies showed how sediment and fertilizers coming in from the land were smothering much of the rich benthic products. Previously, it was felt that the problems with the bay were due to industrial and sewage waste.”

Today, a host of institutions, researchers, and partners are working to restore Chesapeake Bay to improved ecological function. Grace Brush’s work has provided a strong foundation for their efforts.

Selected Research Contributions
Brush GS, Bain DJ (2016). Long Term Trends in Urban Forest Succession. In Science for the Sustainable City: Empirical Insights from the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology. Yale University Press.
Martin, M. D., Zimmer, E. A., Olsen, M. T., Foote, A. D., Gilbert, M. T., Brush, G. (2014). Herbarium specimens reveal a historical shift in phylogeographic structure of common ragweed during native range disturbance. Molecular Ecology. 23(7). 1701-1716.
Hilgartner, W., Brush, G. (2006). Prehistoric Habitat Stability and Post-Settlement Habitat Change In A Chesapeake Bay Freshwater Tidal Wetland, USA. Holocene. 16(4). 479-494.
Brush G (2001). Forests before and after the colonial encounter. In Discovering the Chesapeake: the history of an ecosystem. Johns Hopkins University Press. 40-59.Pasternack, G., Brush, G., Hilgartner, W. (2001). Impact of Historic Land-Use Change on Sediment Delivery to a Chesapeake Bay Subestuarine Delta. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. 26(4). 409-427.
Brush G (1994). Human impact on estuarine ecosystems: an historical perspective. In Global Environmental Change: Geographical Perspectives. Blackwell. 397-416.Brush, G. (1986). Geology and Paleoecology of Chesapeake Bay: A Long-Term Monitoring Tool for Management. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 76(3). 146-160.
Brush, G. (1984). Patterns of Recent Sediment Accumulation in Chesapeake Bay (Virginia Maryland, USA) Tributaries. Chemical Geology. 44(1-3). 227-242.
Brush, G., Davis, F. (1984). Stratigraphic Evidence of Human Disturbance in an Estuary. Quaternary Research. 22(1). 91-108.
Brush, G., Defries, R. (1981). Spatial Distributions of Pollen in Surface Sediments of the Potomac Estuary. Limnology And Oceanography. 26(2). 295-309.
Brush, G., Lenk, C., Smith, J. (1980). The Natural Forests of Maryland – An Explanation of the Vegetation Map of Maryland. Ecological Monographs. 50(1). 77-&.

References and Links
1988. Brush, Grace S. Letter and curriculum vitae to Jean Langenheim, January 16, 1988.
N.D. Johns Hopkins website, faculty profile and publication list.
2017. Finkbeiner, Ann. The Scientist Who Reads a Lost History in the Mud, Hakai Magazine, November 2017.
2014. Rienzi, Greg. What I’ve Learned: Grace Brush, Johns Hopkins University Gazette interview, May-June 2014.

ESA’s Evolving Leadership

Sally White — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 17:16:59 +0000

In 1982, these twelve ESA presidents and past-presidents gathered at the annual meeting for a photo. They represent 32 years of ESA history, from 1951 to 1981, but quite a few are missing. The earliest president in attendance for this photo is Samuel Charles Kendeigh, who served in 1951, immediately following ESA’s first female president, E. Lucy Braun, who was not present for the photo.

ESA past/present presidents captured in 1982 with year of service. Front row: Forest Stearns (1975), George Woodwell (1977), W.D. Billings (1978), F. Herbert Bormann (1970), Frank Golley (1976), Art Cooper (1980). Back row: Eugene Odum (1965), Samuel Charles Kendeigh (1951), E.S. Deevey (1967), Rex Daubenmire (1967), Arthur Hassler (1961), and Gene Likens (1981).

This photo was contributed by Art Cooper, who recalls that the photo “was taken at the ESA Annual Meeting in State College PA in 1982 shortly after I had finished delivering my presidential address— that accounts for the “thank god it’s over” look on my face. The persons in the picture were, I believe, all the ex-presidents (and Likens as president-elect) present at the dinner where the talk was given.”

In November 1988 President Hal Mooney appointed the Ad Hoc Committee on Woman and Minorities with the charge “to enhance the participation of women and minorities in the discipline of ecology, to investigate barriers to participation by women and minorities in professional life and to recommend actions to overcome or remove these barriers.” The committee had its first meeting at the August 1989 ESA annual meeting in Toronto, Canada.

The presidents were again assembled in 1990, on the occasion of ESA’s 75th anniversary. This time, Art Hassler was the earliest one in attendance; he served in 1961. ESA has a three-year election system, with presidents serving first as “President-Elect,” then as “President” and finally as “Past President.” This explains the inclusion of ESA’s fourth female president, Jane Lubchenco, whose term as president began in 1992. After a 35-year gap, ESA’s second female president, Jean Langenheim, served in 1986 and was immediately followed by Margaret Davis (1987). For this time period, 1961 to 1992, ESA’s three female presidents made up almost 16% of those present (though only 10% of the total roster).

Presidents at the 75th anniversary in 1990 with year of service. Front row: Forest Stearns (1975) Francis Evans (1983), Jean Langenheim (1986), Harold Mooney (1988), Rex Daubenmire (1967), Art Hassler (1961), Margaret Davis (1987). Back row: Jane Lubchenco (1992), Larry Bliss (1982), Ron Pulliam (1991), Gene Odum (1965), Robert Paine (1979), Richard Root (1985), Gene Likens (1981), Simon Levin (1990), Paul Risser (1984), Frank Golley (1976), W.D. Billings (1978), Dennis Knight (1989).

By the time of ESA’s Centennial in 2015, women were taking a fuller place in leadership roles, although minorities continued to be underrepresented. With women approaching 37% of those present in this photo, they are now more than 18% of the total presidential roster for this period, and are taking on a variety of other elected roles as well.

By the Centennial in 2015, 14 women had served as president of ESA. Front row: Dennis Knight (1989), Steward Pickett (2011), Jill Baron (2013) Nancy Grimm (2005), David Inouye (2014), Scott Collins (2012), Monica Turner (2015). Back row: Mary Power (2009), Terry Chapin (2010), Alan Covich (2006), Harold Mooney (1988), Simon Levin (1990), Pam Matson (2001), Diana Wall (1999), Gene Likens (1981), Kay Gross (1998), Norm Christensen (2007), Bob Paine (1979), and Jim Brown (1996).

Women members of ESA by age

Women as percentage of ESA membership from 1991 to 2005 by age class. CS Tysor, 2011.

“ESA collected age information from its members during surveys in 1991 and 2005. In 14 years, the percentage of women in ESA increased from 23 to 40%. The percentage of women increased in almost all age classes, exceeding 50% for women at the earliest career stages.” — CS Tysor & SL White, “The Ecological Society of America in the wake of three waves of feminism,” poster, 2011.

Women’s roles and recognition in ESA

Changes in participation by women since ESA’s founding. CS Tysor, 2011.

Jean Langenheim’s Interdisciplinary Explorations

Sally White — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 15:33:18 +0000

Jean Harmon Langenheim September 5, 1925 – March 28, 2021
We are sad to report that Dr. Langenheim passed away last Sunday at the age of 95. She will be missed by many who knew and worked with her. Obituary from University of California, Santa Cruz.

Obsessed with ideas of “how it all fit together,” Dr. Jean Langenheim, in reflecting on her long career, finds a “unifying aspect to the research I’ve done” (JH Langenheim, 2016a). Ranging from paleobotany to chemical ecology to the history of ecology, her topics and efforts spanned a period from women’s roles as secondary to their spouses, to their own recognized research accomplishments and leadership roles in major scientific organizations.

Dr. Jean Langenheim

Many wives have had to remain in the background of their husband’s or colleague’s work and, in fact, women until the late 1970s received little recognition for their part on often large projects. My CV was evidence of this with relatively few publications scattered over many topics but not in my name as senior author… Now it was my time to come forward. — JH Langenheim, 2016b

A pioneer for women in her field, Jean Langenheim was the only woman W.S. Cooper took as a doctoral student among a number of male students who became leaders in plant ecology. She was the only woman in the natural sciences at UCSC from 1966 to about 1972, and was the first woman to be promoted to Professor in 1973, when she became Chair of the Biology Department. She was the first woman elected president of two national scientific societies, and only the second for two others, one of which was ESA.

Education
1946 University of Tulsa, B.S., Summa Cum Laude (Biology)
1949 University of Minnesota, M.S. (Botany with minor in Geology)
1953 University of Minnesota, Ph.D. (Botany with minor in Geology, Dr. W.S. Cooper, advisor)

Career Highlights
1953-66: Faculty Member, Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory; Member of Board of Directors (1962-65); Vice President (1965-66)
1954-59: Research Associate in Department of Botany, University of California, Berkeley
1955-66: Lecturer, Instructor, Research Associate at San Francisco College for Women and Mills College
1962-66: Research Fellow (Biological Laboratories), Research Associate (Botanical Museum), Harvard University
1966-94: Professor (Asst, Assoc, full) at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC)
1994 on: Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz
2000-06: Research Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz

I loved teaching and was fortunate that several part-time positions opened in women’s colleges in San Francisco—essentially the only places for women at this time to teach in a high quality college. I taught one year at Mills College and several years at San Francisco College for Women. These experiences at fine liberal arts colleges, where women’s issues were at the forefront, prepared me [for] action supporting women scientists, as well as for later teaching at UCSC with a liberal arts approach to undergraduate education.
— JH Langenheim, 2016b

Dr. Harriet Barclay, right, with students on a 1946 field trip at Virginia Basin, near Rocky Mtn Biological Laboratory. Jean Langenheim is behind Harriet in white.

During her early career, she also became an instructor in field ecology at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) at Gothic, Colorado. Her interest in the history of ecology grew, initiated from some of Cooper’s teaching of the early beginnings of ecology during graduate work, and extended as she witnessed the development of population ecology while in California.

While in the Midwest, Dr. Langenheim appreciated extended field trips with Dr. Larry Bliss (a third generation ecologist in the Cooper genealogy) and his graduate students. Trips to the southeastern U.S. increased her plant geographical view of the eastern deciduous forest, an area of much plant geographical discussion in ecology.

From August 1986 to August 1987, Dr. Langenheim served as ESA’s second female president. She reflected on this experience in conjunction with the Presidents timeline project she completed for the ESA centennial in 2015. She undertook that effort to survey and record the experiences of each living ESA past president.

Because of its timing, Dr. Langenheim’s career provides particular insight into the lives of women in science. As a young ecologist, she was hampered by neopotism laws, but prevailed with research and teaching positions. After her divorce in 1962, she became a research fellow at Radcliffe and worked in the lab of paleobotanist Elso Barghoorn, where she studied Harvard’s collection of amber. This led her to long-term chemical ecological research on the evolution of several resin-producing trees in the equatorial tropics.

Remember, to do tropical chemical ecology, you have to start from scratch on practically everything—the varying chemistry in the plant, basic systematics of the plant group, kinds of insects and microbes that attack the plant and how to design experiments to study how the plant deals with them, variation in all of the chem ecology with the plants within your group growing in rain forests, dry desert-type conditions, etc.
— JH Langenheim, 2016b

At the HRC booth, Jean signs a copy of her Plant Resins book. Annual Meeting Aug 8, 2011.

Throughout her career, Jean Langenheim was a leader with a multidisciplinary perspective, a devoted, innovative teacher, and a researcher noted for her enthusiasm—always ready for a challenge of new perspectives. Although she officially retired in 1994, she continued to be active on faculty committees, in overseeing doctoral students, and with professional organizations including ESA. She endowed graduate fellowships in plant ecology and evolution at UCSC and RMBL as well as a Chair in this area in the UCSC Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. In 2010, she published her “Odyssey,” detailing the story of her innovative career in field ecology.

Explore Dr. Langenheim’s work in the history of women in ecology on this site.

Dennis Knight and Jean Langenheim, Portland 2012.

Selected Honors and Recognition
1967 Elected Fellow, American Association for Advancement of Science
1972 Cooley Award, American Society of Plant Taxonomists
1975-77 Academic Vice President, Organization for Tropical Studies
1979 Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Tulsa
1985 President, Association for Tropical Biology
1986-87 President, Ecological Society of America and International Society of Chemical Ecology
1993-94 President, Society for Economic Botany
2006 American Botanical Society Centennial Award
2011 Honorary Member, Sigma Delta Epsilon (Graduate Women in Science)
2012: Fellow, Ecological Society of America

Selected Contributions
1956. Langenheim JH. Plant succession on a subalpine earthflow in Colorado. Ecology 17:301-17
1957. Mason HL & Langenheim,JH Language analysis and the concept of environment. Ecology 18:325-339
1962. Langenheim JH. Vegetation and Environmental Patterns in the Crested Butte Area, Gunnison county, Colorado. Ecol Monog. 32: 249-85
1961. Mason, HL.& Langenheim, JH. Natural selection as an ecological concept. Ecology 42: 148-165
1961. Langenheim JH. Late Paleozoic and Early Mesozoic plant fossils from the Cordillera Orientale and correlation of the Giron Formation. Bol Geol. VIII Servicio National de C olombia 99-118.
1962. Langenheim JH and J W Durham. Closed cone pine flora from travertine near Little Sur California. Madrono 17:33-51
1964. Langenheim JH. Present status of botanical studies of ambers. Harvard Botanical Museum Leaflets 20: 225-287
1996. Langenheim JH. The Early History and Progress of Women Ecologists: Emphasis on Research Contributions. Annual Review of Ecological Systems, 27:1-53.
2003. Langenheim JH. Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology and Ethnobotany. Portland, OR: Timber Press.

References
2010. Langenheim JH. The Odyssey of a Woman Field Scientist: A Story of Passion, Persistence, and Patience. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris.
2016a. Langenheim JH. Email to SL White, July 2, 2016. Cover note to 2016b.
2016b. Langenheim JH. Ever Interest in Viewing Nature Through Interdisciplinary Thought, 23 pp.

Deep Ecology: Remembering Becky Sharitz

Sally White — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 16:41:59 +0000

Deep Ecology with Becky: A remembrance of Dr. Rebecca Sharitz
by Neil Pederson, who posted this tribute at his site Broadleaf Papers. He is Senior Ecologist at Harvard Forest. We think it nicely conveys a sense of being in the field with Dr. Sharitz. This essay is cross-posted here with permission.

We’ve provided some dates and other information below Dr. Pederson’s post. A Resolution of Respect for Dr. Sharitz by Dr. Loretta Battaglia is scheduled to appear in the April issue of the ESA Bulletin.

A pioneering scientist and world expert on wetlands, Dr. Rebecca Sharitz recently passed away on October 20th, 2018. To her family, friends, colleagues, and students, Dr. Sharitz went by the name Becky. Formal memorial statements will be released in the coming month. I wanted to share some memories that illustrate how Becky was a mentor and role model to me. While working as a Master’s student under her at one of the best ecological centers at that time, the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) in Aiken, South Carolina, Becky was functionally my scientific advisor. Although she was not the only scientific advisor for me, she and I mostly talked science when I visited her on my way from or to a place she loved, the Congaree Swamp National Monument. The Congaree is now a national park, no doubt in part due to her efforts to give it recognition and protection.

Being a Yankee at the time, 1991, I did not like getting my feet wet. I had just driven from New York State to the southeastern US to start my MS degree program. Being paid through a grant Becky led to study a forest with some of the biggest trees in the eastern US was all that was needed to lure me to a different ecosystem and culture. I still remember driving along Old Route 17 in South Carolina at dusk, rolling the windows down after a hot August day and breathing in what I later learned was the wonderful aroma of loblolly pine after being baked by summer heat. It is a perfume to which I love to return.

Soon after arriving in the South, I met up with Becky and her students at SREL. We climbed into a large blue 4 WD Suburban and headed out for my introduction to the Congaree. Little did I realize I was really being introduced to the rigor and greatness of Becky Sharitz.

We were on the eastern edge of the Congaree where a dirt bluff road separated a young loblolly pine plantation to the east and a deep cypress-tupelo wetland to the west. The people at SREL had already prepped me for this field trip by taking me to the room with live, but caged cottonmouth, timber rattler, and canebrake snakes. These were the large, potentially dangerous herps whose territory I was going to work in during the next 2-3 years. They also helped me pick out waders because, you know, I was a Yankee and we were going to visit a wetland. I chose chest waders because I heard the water would be deep.

We pulled up to the opposing ecosystems, the young loblolly pine plantation and the deep, ancient cypress-tupelo swamp, and parked next to an opening into the swamp. I went to the back of the vehicle, figured out whether or not to keep my shoes on inside the waders, and clumsily pulled them on. I used to not like getting my feet wet… until Becky Sharitz.

Around the corner of the Suburban comes Becky, all 5’10”-6’ feet of her. Whatever her height, she projected a tall presence. And, Becky was wearing tennis shoes and jeans, not waders. I said, “Aren’t you going to put on waders?”

“Nah”, Becky scoff-smiled, throwing her head back a little bit.

Becky Sharitz

In we went. Coming off the road, we dropped about 4-5 feet into the wetland. We immediately went from the warm, bright early-morning Carolina Sun into what felt like a cool dark. The dense canopy of swamp tupelo, bald cypress, and, in slightly elevated areas, various oaks, sugarberries, and other many species, created a local environment that felt exactly the opposite of that clearcut. Of course, thigh-high water switched the environmental conditions quickly, too.

If you are unfamiliar with baldcypress (Taxodium distichum) systems, please go to your nearest southeastern wetland now. Soon. Baldcypress is an amazing tree in all seasons and creates an ecosystem that can reach the primal portions of a human’s mind. These systems are, I’m told, dinosaur habitat. At the very least, we now know it can live more than 2000 years. These prehistoric-looking conifers with small gill-like leaves also have another wonderful feature: knees. Ah, there is a scientific name for these (pneumatophores), but I like knees. Baldcypress knees rise up out of their root system above the water (for good portions of the year). Whether their function is to exchange oxygen for roots, stabilizing giant trees in an unstable, waterlogged environment, both, or more hardly matters to intrepid hikers of southeastern cypress swamps. They exist. These trees have knees, and, as I was warned before that initial visit, these knees are also called shin busters. Hiking in a dark wetland during the middle of the day in thigh-high water, you cannot see all of the knees. They are lurking beneath the water (with what other creatures? cottonmouths?). Somehow, your shins find them. Always. And, wearing chest waders, you have to be careful: falling down in a deep wetland with chest-high waders could fill them with water and that could be the end of you.

Becky led the way and didn’t look back. Not once. Not for at least 40-45 minutes.

I’m not sure how fast we were going. It felt fast to me. And it was quiet. Hardly anyone said anything. I’d say there were at least five of us. Becky didn’t say anything, for sure.

At about 40-45 minutes in, it was a deep swamp in many ways, Becky paused, turned, and said to me, “How ‘ya doing?” I felt relieved and squeaked out a “Fine.”

Honestly, I was a little on edge. Notorious snakes that could swim, dark waters, shin busters, uneven swamp bottom, not knowing where my feet actually were, the potential to fill my waders was great. If so, what else would get me?

We took a quick swig of water and kept going. Becky eventually slowed her pace, pausing here and there, marveling at the swamp, pointing out some of her favorite plants, chatting with her students. To this day, I do not remember what we went there to see. I cannot recall what our destination might have been. Were we going to see an ancient baldcypress? I really have no memory of that. I only remember the prep and that initial 40-45 minute walk into the deep, dark Congaree Swamp with Becky. I hardly remember who was with us. I’m going to guess Loretta Battaglia, the PhD student who’d also mentor me during that period, and, likely Joy Young, the other member of Becky’s lab who mentored me as I began to wade into tree-ring analysis.

I later learned that this was one way Becky might test her students, to see who could handle the southeastern swamps. If so, it was a trip that still makes me laugh. Wonderful. In fact, I have used her approach as a model when bringing classes of college students into the field. I would tell them where we were going and suggest how they might dress: “You are going to wear sandals as we climb up onto this small weathered plateau and sample in areas with catbrier? OK.” After a short intro, we’d shoot up the mountains. I typically would look back after 20 minutes or so. We often weren’t going as deep as Becky would go.

Becky was a fabulous mentor. Traveling from Auburn, Alabama (where I was officially enrolled) to the Congaree or vice versa, I would stop by the SREL whenever I could. Although Becky was the Head of the Division of Wetland Ecology, she would always make time to see me. I would call ahead, speaking to Becky’s assistant Gwen, to see if I could just drop in. I don’t remember a no. I remember waiting a few times, but not a ‘no’. Becky would clear the desk, ask me how things were going, ask about what was happening in the Congaree, whether that be the water level or Harry (manager of the Congaree at that time) or how the paw-paw were responding to the canopy disturbance created by Hurricane Hugo.

Becky, somehow, always had the time. Those meetings were always a settling point for me. Moving from New York State to Alabama was not easy for me. Becky had a way of making it feel alright. Sometimes we talked specifically about that. Often we didn’t.

To maintain my assistantship I had to make counts of the tree regeneration in 10 plots across the Congaree. The diversity of species was bewildering, and I cannot say I could identify everything correctly the first year… or the second year. When asked what I wanted to study for my MS degree, I said I wanted to answer the question in the park brochure of how the enormous, towering loblolly pines established in the Congaree. The brochure said it was a mystery (it still is a bit of a mystery). Though not on Becky’s list of things to do, she ok’d my proposed project as long as I counted the seedlings, too. I relished the freedom Becky gave me.

Some days I was lucky enough to be present when Becky would hold her lab meetings. We would go into a lab space and people would either stand or sit in a large circle. I recall Becky having about 7-10 people in her group: Ph.D. students, M.S. students, technicians, and the occasional post-doc. She would go around the room –asking each person what they had done, what they were going to do, if they needed help, and often asking someone else in the group if they could help another person. Perhaps I was only in 3 or 4 of those meetings over two years, but it is what I model my lab meetings on 25 years later.

Becky was smart and insightful about many things, especially the dynamics of the wetland ecosystems she loved. In reflecting back on how I introduce students to the field and hold my meetings, I am a bit surprised at the bits of Becky’s mentoring DNA that is in me. She was a top-shelf mentor. Still, how Becky imparted some of her ways to me is a bit of a mystery in itself. On top of being a great scientist, she would often smile, and had a subtle, sublime way of making me people feel at home. Who wouldn’t want to be like Becky?

I’ll never forget our conversation on paw-paw dynamics. She pushed me that afternoon to go beyond my observations into this strange, wonderful understory species. She asked me to consider how and why they pop up in dense colonies and how that recruitment might impact recovery of the floodplain forest over the coming decades and centuries. I wish I were able to have more conversations like that. I mean, among the many publications Becky authored, she did co-edit a book on wetlands, “Ecology of Freshwater and Estuarine Wetlands.”

It cannot be overstated how much of a pioneer Becky Sharitz was, both with her science and, in the context of the focus on STEM today and being a woman in science, being one of two women at an international botanical congress in the 1970s. Becky, therefore, was a pioneer in many ways. She earned her Ph.D., working with Frank McCormick at the University of North Carolina, in a quick four years after earning her B.S degree from Roanoke College in 1966. Over the course of her four decade career, she became an international leader on the ecology of wetlands, directed a well-funded research group, and was an acting director and unit head at one of the most prestigious ecology labs in the world. She was awarded for her work with the National Wetlands Award for Research Science. Upon her receiving that award, a colleague noted that Becky’s research was the cornerstone of conservation, which, ultimately, was where the heart of her research could be found – preservation of the natural world, and especially the vulnerable but vital wetlands of the southeastern US.

Thank you Becky for all of your brilliant work and guidance. We were fortunate to have shared the Earth with you and bask in your love of the natural world.
_______________________________
Much thanks to Dr. Loretta Battaglia, who helped straighten more than a few sentences and drew away some cobwebs in a couple of the corners in my mind.

—Neil Pederson

Rebecca Reyburn Sharitz, August 10, 1944 – October 20, 2018
Education and Career Highlights
B.S., Biology (honors), Roanoke College, 1966
Ph.D., Botany/Ecology, University of North Carolina, 1970
Assistant Professor of Biology, Saginaw Valley State University, 1970-71
University of Georgia, 1972-present*
   Adjunct Assistant Professor, Botany, 1972-1977
   Adjunct Associate Professor, Botany, 1980-89
   Professor of Plant Biology, 1989-2010 (emerita, 2010-present*)
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, 1972-present* (concurrent with UGa)
   Research Associate, 1972-1977
   Associate Research Ecologist, 1978-1986
   Senior Research Ecologist, 1986-present*
Meritorious Teaching Award, Association of Southeastern Biologists, 1997
Adjunct Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources Clemson University, 2003-present*
Fellow, Society of Wetland Scientists, 2008
National Wetlands Award in Science Research, Environmental Law Institute, May 2010
Fellow, Ecological Society of America, 2012
* CV dated 2013

“What keeps me interested is the constant sense of discovery when I am in wetland ecosystems: their variability, their constant changes, and their simple beauty.” — Dr. Sharitz, quoted in SREL/UGa article on her receipt of National Wetlands Award

Dr. Sharitz’s teaching and research at University of Georgia and Savannah River Ecology Laboratory spanned four decades of a developmental period in ecology. She investigated bottomland forests, Carolina bays, and thermal pollution produced by nuclear power with clarity and thoroughness, shedding light on ecosystem dynamics and impacts of wetland perturbation such as dam construction and river regulation. As SREL summed up some of her contributions: “She has received over 40 research grants, has trained more than 30 graduate students, 13 postdoctoral fellows, and over 100 volunteers, and has been invited to serve on four National Academy of Science committees.” Her substantial efforts on behalf of wetlands were recognized by the National Wetlands Award in 2010. See related article on the history of thermal ecology at SREL.

She served two terms as member-at-large on the ESA Council in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and was the second woman to do so. Then she served four years as ESA’s first female Treasurer in the late 1980s, followed by two as Vice President (1990-91). She also served on various ESA committees, chaired the Southeastern Chapter, and was an officer in several ESA sections. Many other scientific societies benefited from her service during her career, as did national and international panels and boards, including the National Research Council, Department of Defense, and National Science Foundation.

“My initial interest in ecology developed from an early childhood excitement about natural history. This interest was supported by my Virginia dairy farm upbringing and cemented by parental guidance which never led me to believe that the career expectations of women should be particularly different from those of men. I had no role models. However, I was captivated by the ecological theories and the rising environmental awareness in the United States in the late 1960’s.” —Letter to JH Langenheim, 1988

Selected Contributions
Gibbons, J.W. and R.R. Sharitz (eds) 1974. Thermal Ecology. AEC Symposium Series (CONF-730505). Technical Information Center, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Oak Ridge, TN. 670 p.
In 1995, when Jean Langenheim asked female ecologists to share papers they considered significant contributions to ecology, Dr. Sharitz listed the following three papers:
Jones, Robert H., Rebecca R. Sharitz, Philip M. Dixon, Debra S. Segal, Rebecca L. Schneider Woody Plant Regeneration in Four Floodplain Forests. Ecological Monographs: 64(3). February 1994. pp 345-367.
Sharitz Rebecca R.; J. Frank McCormick Population Dynamics of Two Competing Annual Plant Species. Ecology, Vol. 54, No. 4. (Jul., 1973), pp. 723-740.
Sharitz Rebecca R., Lindsay R. Boring, David H. Van Lear, John E. Pinder III. Integrating Ecological Concepts with Natural Resource Management of Southern Forests. Ecological Applications: 2(3), pp 226-237. August 1992.

References
SREL Mourns the Loss of Rebecca Sharitz, University of Georgia, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory,
Rebecca Sharitz, faculty page, at University of Georgia
Curriculum Vitae, Rebecca R. Sharitz, December 2013. 15 p.
Letter to Dr. Jean H. Langenheim, January 12, 1988. 1 p.
Letter to Dr. Jean H. Langenheim, July 3, 1995. 1 p.
Langenheim, Jean H. The Path and Progress of American Women Ecologists. (JSTOR) Address of the Past President. Davis, California, August 1988. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America Vol. 69, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 184-197 Stable URL:

Fifty Years Ago: The Development of Thermal Ecology at SREL

Sally White — Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:05:21 +0000

Fifty Years Ago: The Development of Thermal Ecology at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory
by Sharon Kingsland
From the HRC newsletter, #16, January 2019
Download the January 2019 HRC Newsletter, as pdf.
The recent passing of Rebecca (Becky) Sharitz in October 2018 prompts reflections on how the national laboratories created after the Second World War provided opportunities for the growth of ecology and the emergence of new fields of ecological research. Sharitz was Senior Research Ecologist at the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecological Laboratory (SREL), and Professor Emerita in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Georgia. Along with Michael H. Smith and Eugene P. Odum, she wrote a history of SREL for a book edited by Gary W. Barrett and Terry L. Barrett, Holistic Science: The Evolution of the Georgia Institute of Ecology, 1940-2000. Although the book’s purpose was to celebrate the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia, chapters also explore how ecology developed at cooperating institutions and satellite laboratories like SREL. The chapter by Smith, Odum, and Sharitz has an interesting discussion of SREL’s role in the development of the new field of “thermal ecology” starting in 1969.
SREL had been founded early in the 1950s at the Atomic Energy Commission’s Savannah River Plant (later Savannah River Site), along the Savannah River in South Carolina. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the precursor to the Department of Energy, operated all the national laboratories until 1974. The laboratories then came under the jurisdiction of the Energy Research and Development Administration, and eventually of the Department of Energy, created in 1977.
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In the 1950s, the Savannah River Site (SRS) was developed as a plutonium producing facility for the country’s nuclear bomb program. Biologists at the AEC believed it would be valuable to have ecological baseline studies done prior to this development. Faculty from the University of South Carolina and University of Georgia were interested, especially Eugene Odum at Georgia, who saw the potential for creating an environmental research park on the site. He submitted an ambitious proposal for a large scale project that included a team from Emory University, but it was rejected as too expensive. Instead, in 1951 the AEC announced it would provide modest grants of about $10,000 to universities for ecological studies. While some faculty lost interest because of the small size of the grants, Odum did not, and submitted a smaller proposal, which was accepted. He used the funds to hire graduate students for a project centered on the study of old-field succession. An innovative aspect of this study was its focus on the roles of both plant and animal communities in succession. The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory that Odum started cemented the relationship between SRS and the University of Georgia. As discussed by Smith, Odum, and Sharitz, it was a model for a cooperative scientific partnership between the federal government and a university.
While scientists from the Universities of Georgia and South Carolina focused on terrestrial ecology at the site, the Du Pont Company, the site’s main contractor, provided funding for study of the Savannah River. Ruth Patrick, from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, received Du Pont funding to survey species in the river; this project developed into a long-term ecological monitoring and research program. By the time that Becky Sharitz arrived at SREL as a Research Associate in 1972, terrestrial and aquatic ecological research had been underway for two decades.
Sharitz’s arrival at SREL coincided with a new research program on the effects of thermal discharges on aquatic ecosystems. Water was needed to cool the nuclear reactors at the site, and the hot water was discharged directly into streams and reservoirs. The AEC had been conducting research on thermal stress since the 1950s, at its Hanford nuclear facility on the Columbia River as well as at the Savannah River Site. However, such studies used classified information on water temperatures, and therefore could not be published. The University of Georgia faculty working at SREL tended to avoid topics involving classified data, fearing that contributing only to government documents would jeopardize their chances of promotion and tenure. But satellite infrared photography led to the declassification of water temperature data, and gave the ecologists at SREL the opportunity to develop this area of research.
A research program on “thermal ecology” started at SREL in 1969, and J. Whitfield (Whit) Gibbons, herpetologist and ecologist who came to SREL as a postdoctoral fellow in 1968-69, published the first paper from the program in 1970. SREL was well suited to studies of thermal stress. The hot water from reactors was being discharged into a diverse set of habitats, including reservoirs, natural streams, and river floodplain swamps, producing a thermal spectrum ranging from lethal to normal, across a variety of moving and still-water environments. The essay by Smith, Odum, and Sharitz described it as a “unique outdoor laboratory for thermal ecology unparalleled in the United States” (p. 113).
After Sharitz joined SREL, she and Gibbons organized the first scientific symposium on thermal ecology. It was sponsored jointly by SREL, the Du Pont Company Savannah River Laboratory, and the Atomic Energy Commission, and was published in 1974. Ruth Patrick presented a paper at the symposium, as did Howard T. Odum, who had been studying the thermal impact of a power plant at Crystal River, Florida. Dixy Lee Ray, marine biologist and Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, noted in her preface to the volume that the challenge of meeting the nation’s energy needs and deciding where to locate new power plants made studies of thermal stress increasingly important. “It is the task of ecologists and scientists to influence the early part of the decision-making process by pointing out the environmental choices which are acceptable and those which are unacceptable,” she wrote.
As the research program at SREL expanded, a second thermal ecology symposium was organized in 1975. Soon ecologists were also looking at the synergistic effects of temperature changes and other environmental contaminants, and the program evolved into the Aquatic Stress Program. Although research on thermal ecology declined in the 1980s, Smith, Odum, and Sharitz credited the research program in thermal ecology with helping to establish SREL as an ecological research leader in its own right, and not just as a satellite of the University of Georgia’s Institute of Ecology.
The illuminating essay by Smith, Odum, and Sharitz also underscores the value of historical writing and reflection by scientists, who can provide insider knowledge that is not in published records or even archival sources. Essays by ecologists that reflect on their careers, growth of institutions, and the development of ecological research programs are of much value to future historians. For those who may not wish to write historical essays, the Historical Records Committee encourages you to consider doing an oral history, perhaps with a trained interviewer or a historian of science. Ecologists who are contemplating donating their papers (which might include correspondence, notebooks, teaching materials, photographs, and other records of a lifetime) to a local archive might consider doing an oral history with a trained interviewer, as part of an archival collection. The oral histories done by our committee, which focus on people who have contributed to the Ecological Society of America, become part of the Ecological Society of America’s archives at the University of Georgia.
References
Gibbons, J. Whitfield, and Rebecca R. Sharitz, eds.1974. Thermal Ecology: Proceedings of a symposium held at Augusta, Georgia, May 3-5, 1973. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Technical Information Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Smith, Michael H., Eugene P. Odum, and Rebecca R. Sharitz, 2001. Savannah River Ecology Laboratory: a model for a cooperative partnership between a university and the federal government. Pp 95-127 in G. W. Barrett and T. L. Barrett, eds., Holistic Science: The Evolution of the Georgia Institute of Ecology (1940-2000), Taylor & Francis, New York.
Archival sources relevant to this subject include the Eugene P. Odum papers, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia; Howard T. Odum papers at the University of Florida, Gainesville; The Ruth M. Patrick papers at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. The Savannah River Site History Project, a cooperative project between the Department of Energy and New South Associates, has produced a history on CD-ROM, Savannah River Site at Fifty, by Mary Beth Reed, Mark Swanson, Steve Gaither, J. W. Joseph, and William Henry. The table of contents and access to chapters are available online from the Savannah River Site.

New Orleans Meeting 2018

Sally White — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 19:48:15 +0000

Logo from the 2018 Annual Meeting

The plenary talk at the 2018 New Orleans meeting, presented by Robert Twilley, has been uploaded by ESA and is available. Robert Twilley is executive director of the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program and a distinguished professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Science at Louisiana State University. Among the discussion, the talk includes historical content related to the history of the Mississippi delta.

Women in Ecology Update

Sally White — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 14:25:24 +0000

Looking for Women in Science (especially Ecology)? You can find a bunch of them here. For the last few years, we’ve been focusing on female ecologists, especially during Women’s History Month (March) each year. Visit our page devoted to these women for a full list of links.
The good news is we have much more to come! Thanks to the work of Dr. Jean Langenheim, we’ll be bringing you more profiles on women in ecology in the coming months. These latest profiles will feature one of Dr. Langenheim herself, ESA’s second female president and the foundation of our knowledge of Women in Ecology. Find us on Twitter (@ESAhistory, #womeninecology).
If we’ve counted right, ESA’s FIFTEENTH female president, Dr. Laura Huennecke, will take office next month. Twelve of these women have served in the last 30 years; five in the last ten years. Several are featured in microbiographies, but none has a full profile here. We welcome your participation in helping us fill these gaps!

We also have a new collection of photographs we’ll be adding to the above in the near future. Stay tuned!!