When Peruvian police seized some trea- 

 sures plundered from a prehistoric pyra- 

 mid at Sipan, archeologist Walter Alva 

 (page 26) was called in to evaluate them. 

 Recognizing that a major tomb had been 

 looted, he organized the subsequent scien- 

 tific excavations that have so far revealed 

 three intact tombs. A native of Peru, Alva, 

 left, has participated in numerous excava- 

 tions on that country's north coast and is 

 the director of the Museo Briining at Lam- 

 bayeque. Coauthor Christopher B. Don- 

 nan is a professor of anthropology and di- 

 rector of the Fowler Museum of Cultural 

 History at the University of California, 

 Los Angeles. A specialist in Moche ico- 

 nography, he participated in the Sipan ex- 

 cavations and worked to identify the 

 priestly ranks of the tombs' principal oc- 

 cupants. Alva and Donnan described the 

 discovery of the tombs and the nature of 

 Moche culture in several articles that ap- 

 peared in the October 1988 and June 1990 

 issues of National Geographic. They are 

 the coauthors of Royal Tombs of Sipan 

 (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural 

 History, University of California, 1993). 



"I've always enjoyed spending time 

 outside, so pursuit of a graduate degree in 

 field biology seemed a logical way to com- 

 bine my avocation with a possible voca- 

 tion," says Renee Godard (page 36). 

 Soon to be assistant professor of biology at 

 Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia, Go- 

 dard became interested in the evolution of 

 communication as a doctoral student at the 

 University of North Carolina at Chapel 

 Hill. By studying one species, the hooded 







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warbler, in the field, she began to reaUze 

 the intricate role song played in the bird's 

 biology. Most recently Godard has been 

 studying a small population of Caribbean 

 flamingos in the Galapagos Islands. Coau- 

 thor Haven Wiley earned his doctorate in 

 animal behavior from The Rockefeller 

 University in New York. A professor of 

 biology and ecology at the University of 

 North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wiley has 

 done extensive fieldwork in South Amer- 

 ica, particularly in Venezuela. But, he 

 says, "In the 1980s, with a growing family, 

 I decided to shift my field research closer 

 to home — and discovered that hooded 



warblers were among the commonest 

 songbirds in the bottomland forest near the 

 university." This species proved to be an 

 enlightening one in his study of animal 

 communication. Readers can find further 

 information on the behavior and nesting of 

 warblers in Douglass H. Morse's Ameri- 

 can Warblers (Cambridge: Harvard Uni- 

 versity Press, 1989) and Hal H. Harrison's 

 Wood Warbler's World (New York: Simon 

 and Schuster, 1984). The Selfish Gene, by 

 Richard Dawkins (Oxford: Oxford Uni- 

 versity Press, 1990) introduces some of 

 the evolutionary problems associated with 

 reciprocity. 



84 Natural History 5/94 



