Armed with 

 only a net, John 

 Jaenike (page 

 46) is ready to 

 catch some fruit 

 flies. Unlike the 

 famous lab insect 

 Drosophila 

 melanogaster, 

 Jaenike's quarry 

 are wild and seek 

 out mushrooms on which to lay their 

 eggs. He first began studying these mush- 

 room-loving flies while conducting field- 

 work on a small island off the coast of 

 Maine (his favorite place to work). 

 Jaenike earned his B.A. in biology at 

 Amherst College in 1971 and his Ph.D. in 

 biology at Princeton University in 1975. 

 He is currently a professor of biology at 

 the University of Rochester Jaenike en- 

 joys a host of outdoor acdvities such as 

 hiking and windsurfing, but his favorite 

 pastime is playing with his sons, Peter 

 and David. 



"I first became interested in snapping 

 shrimps as a beginning graduate student 

 at the University of California at Berke- 

 ley, when I went to look for octopuses in 

 Baja California," recalls Nancy Knowl- 

 ton (page 66). "I found hundreds of 

 shrimps and almost no octopuses, leading 

 me to believe that the former might make 

 a more practical subject for my doctoral 

 dissertation." Now a staff scientist at the 

 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute 

 in Panama, Knowlton continues to study 

 shrimps, as well as corals. In the future, 

 she plans to investigate diversity in corals 

 and their symbiotic algae. She says that 

 for twenty years, she found herself work- 

 ing on projects 

 that incidentally 

 turned up previ- 

 ously unrecog- 

 nized species, 

 and she has now 

 turned to the 

 problem of ma- 

 rine biodiversity 

 full time: "I think that when nature tries 

 so insistently to tell you something, you 

 should listen. Hence my current interest 

 in marine biodiversity and systematics 

 generally." For further reading on the bio- 

 logical history of the Isthmus of Panama, 

 Knowiton recommends G. J. Vermeij's 

 article "The Biological History of a Sea- 

 way," Science, vol. 260 (1993). 



The strange case of the Jersey dwarfs 

 caught the attention of Adrian M. Lister 

 (page 60) in the early 1980s, while he 

 was a doctoral candidate at Cambridge 

 University in England, studying the evo- 

 lution of Pleistocene deer Now a research 

 fellow in the Department of Biology at 

 University College London, Lister contin- 

 ues to study Pleistocene mammals, espe- 

 cially deer and mammoths. His fieldwork 

 has included the excavation of four mam- 

 moth skeletons in Shropshire, England, 

 and he has been a visiting scientist at the 

 Hot Springs Mammoth Site in South 

 Dakota. Lister's interest in mammals ex- 

 tends beyond fossils to living animals, 

 particularly to the preservation of the 

 Asian elephant. He recently toured re- 

 serves in Nepal and India for a look at the 



Michael Lee (page 63) was bom in 



Malaysia and grew up in Australia. Lee 

 says that he, like many children, acquired 

 an interest in dinosaurs and natural his- 

 tory at a young age, but unlike most he 

 never grew out of it. He earned his B.S. 

 in zoology at the University of Queens- 

 land and is now finishing his Ph.D. at 

 Cambridge University. His current inter- 

 est is the study of primitive reptiles (those 

 living before the age of dinosaurs) and 

 pareiasaurs in particular. Lee's fieldwork 



problems of elephant conservation in 

 those countries. For more information on 

 Pleistocene fauna, including the discov- 

 ery of frozen mammoths, readers can 

 refer to Antony J. Sutcliffe's book On the 

 Track of Ice Age Mammals (Cambridge: 

 Harvard University Press, 1985) and for 



I , ^^ .,^ more on the phe- 

 m/^^^I^ nomenon of 

 ^^^^H^P dwarfing in is- 

 i~ ^ wF '^ land mammals, 

 Xv ^9^ — readers can con- 

 sult Paul Y. Son- 

 daar's article 

 "The Island 

 Sweepstakes," in 

 Natural History 

 (September 

 1986). 



(which includes "excavating" specimens 

 from museum drawers) has taken him to 

 Russia, South Africa, and Australia. He 

 plans to return to Australia, where he will 

 be at the University of Sydney working 

 on the evolution of monitor lizards — the 

 only large terrestrial reptilian carnivores 

 alive today. For more details on similari- 

 ties between pareiasaurs and turtles, see 

 Lee's article "The Origin of the Turtle 

 Body Plan: Bridging a Famous Morpho- 

 logic Gap" in Science, vol. 261 (1993). 



Steve Jones (page 72) is a professor in 

 the Department of Genetics at University 

 College London. These days, he writes, 

 his hobby is doing research; his present 

 vocation, being 

 chairman of the 

 department. He 

 does manage, 

 however, to con- 

 tinue his investi- 

 gations into the 

 ecological genet- 

 ics of snails and 



slugs and the molecular mechanisms of 

 human mutations. In the future, Jones 

 hopes to concentrate more on his 

 "hobby," studying the snails and slugs 

 surrounding his "very modest" house in 

 France. For more on human genetics, he 

 recommends The Code of Codes: Scien- 

 tific and Social Issues in the Human 

 Genome Project, edited by D. J. Kevles 

 and L. Hood (Cambridge: Harvard Uni- 

 versity Press, 1992). Jones's book The 

 Language of Genes will be published by 

 Anchor Doubleday in August. 



For the past fifteen years, John K. B. 

 Ford (page 98) has studied the social be- 

 havior and underwater sounds of killer 

 whales and other cetaceans. A marine 

 mammal specialist at the Vancouver 

 Aquarium, Ford says his research on 

 killer whales led to his interest in pho- 

 tographing these largest members of the 

 dolphin family. He first photographed the 

 natural markings on their dorsal fins as a 

 means of identifying and keeping track of 



individuals and later began documenting 

 their activities as well. His doctoral dis- 

 sertation at the University of British Co- 

 lumbia, where he is now an adjunct pro- 

 fessor of zoology, describes the existence 

 of regional dialects among these creatures 

 {see "Family Fugues," Natural History, 

 March 1991). Hiding in a blind on the 

 beach. Ford snapped this month's "Nat- 

 ural Moment" with a Nikon F-801, 300- 

 mm f4 lens, and Kodachrome 64 film. 



i04 Natural History 6/94 



