BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 'V 



Stephen J. Walsh was bora on 8 September 1957 in Denver, Colorado. He 

 developed an early interest in biology and natural history, kindled by many family 

 outings and boy scout camping trips throughout the Rocky Mountains and westera 

 plains. He fondly recalls many visits to the Denver Museum of Natural History, 

 where the exhibits captivated his attention for hours at a time. 



In 1971 he moved with his family to Edwardsville, Illinois, a small town just 

 east of St. Louis, Missouri. Immediately after graduating high school in 1975, he 

 enrolled as a liberal arts major at Saint Louis University. There he fostered his 

 long-standing interest in biology and received a bachelor of arts degree with honors 

 in 1979. As an undergraduate, he became interested in a variety of subdisciplines, 

 but it was not until his senior year that he became obsessed with the study of fishes. 



In the fall of 1979 he received a fellowship at Southern Illinois University at 

 Carbondale, where he enrolled as a graduate student in zoology. There he further 

 developed his keen interest in fish biology and pursued a variety of research topics 

 that resulted in extensive fieldwork throughout lUinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and 

 Tennessee. In 1982 he received a Master of Arts degree, based on his research of 

 pygmy sunfish ecology in the swamps of western Kentucky. -^ . 



In 1983 he moved to Gainesville, where he enrolled in the Ph.D. program in 

 zoology at the University of Florida. There he pursued additional studies on fishes 

 and nurtured a special interest in catfish biology and systematics. In 1987 he 

 relinquished graduate support in the form of teaching and research assistantships, 

 and began working as a biologist in the fish collection of the Florida State Museum 



