Authors 



South African photographer Barrie 

 Wilkins (page 80) has spent many years 

 taking pictures in the Kalahari Gemsbok 

 Park, which is renowned for its lions. He 

 has exhibited his work worldwide and has 

 twice garnered the Photographic Society 

 of America's Medbury Award. The photo 

 in this month's "Natural Moment" is itself 

 a prizewinner, having taken a first place in 

 the British Gas Wildlife Photographer of 

 the Year Competition, organized by BBC 

 Wildlife magazine and the Natural History 

 Museum in London. Because the South 

 African National Parks Board prohibits 

 photographers in nature reserves from 

 stalking their quarry on foot, Wilkins 

 prowls the Gemsbok Park in a four-wheel- 

 drive van, with special mobile camera 

 brackets mounted on the window frame. 

 "The vehicle acts as a blind, allowing rela- 

 tively close access without disturbing the 

 creatures," he writes. Although his first 

 love is the Kalahari, Wilkins has traveled 

 extensively throughout southern Africa 

 and has also photographed Alaska's bears 

 and Yellowstone's winter wildlife. In 

 1986, he coauthored Kalahari Safari, a 

 photographic book on Kalahari wildlife. 

 He continues to evaluate and record the in- 

 fluence of the seasons on the park's ani- 

 mals. The picture was taken using a Canon 

 EOS with a 600 f4 EF L autofocus lens. 



As a teen-ager, Patricia Chappie 



Wright (page 44) read Gerald Durrell's 

 books about his adventures with animals, 

 and after graduating from coUege in the 

 late sixties, she acquired an owl monkey 

 as a pet. Intrigued by its behavior, she was 

 inspired to go to South America to have a 

 look at owl monkeys in the wild. After that 

 experience, primatologist Warren Kinzey 

 convinced her to go to graduate school. 

 Now an associate professor of anthropol- 

 ogy at the State University of New York at 

 Stony Brook, Wright is a MacArthur Fel- 

 low and international coordinator of a pro- 

 ject to conserve the tropical rain forest in 

 Madagascar's Ranomafana National Park. 

 Her own fieldwork in Madagascar has in- 

 cluded studies of three species of bamboo 

 lemurs {see "Lemurs Lost and Found," 

 Natural Histoty, July 1988) and, for the 

 past eight years, the ecology and behavior 

 of diademed sifakas. For more on rain 

 forests, she recommends John Terborgh's 

 Diversity and the Tropical Rain Forest 

 (New York: Scientific American Library, 

 1992). Terborgh has also written a book 

 specifically about Peru's Cocha Cashu Bi- 

 ological Station: Five New World Pri- 

 mates (Princeton: Princeton University 

 Press, 1984). 



"You try to uncover the logic of nature, 

 and that logic is always the same, wher- 

 ever you find yourself," writes Bernd 

 Heinrich (page 52), referring to the effect 

 of insects on flower evolution. The idea 

 that bees and other pollinators shaped the 

 appearance and diversity of flowers first 

 excited him when he was a graduate stu- 

 dent researching insects in a Maine bog. 

 Twenty years later, he releamed the evolu- 

 tionary lesson when he saw the array of 

 similar-looking red flowers — including a 

 large red buttercup — blooming in the 

 Judean desert near Jerusalem. A professor 

 of zoology at the University of Vermont, 

 Heinrich is a frequent contributor to Nat- 

 ural History. His latest book, In the Maine 

 Woods, will be published by Addison- 

 Wesley this fall. 



82 Natural History 5/94 



