CONTRIBUTORS 



Photographs by JACK DERMID have appeared in the pages of 

 Natural History for more than fifty years — including the cover 

 images for the April 1954 and April 1957 issues. He is retired 

 from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where he 

 taught environmental science and marine biology. Dermid has 

 hiked countless miles all over the United States, always with cam- 

 era in hand, but he made his photograph of a dragonfly trapped 

 by a sundew plant ("The Natural Moment," page 4) less than thirty miles from 

 his home in Wilmington. His photographs have been exhibited at the North 

 Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh and featured in Amphibians 

 and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia, published in 1980 by the University of 

 North Carolina Press. He also co-authored The World of the Wood Duck. 



More than forty years ago RICHARD D. ESTES ("Wildebeests of 

 the Serengeti" page 28) chose the western white-bearded wilde- 

 beest as the subject for his doctoral dissertation; he has con- 

 tinued his field studies of that African antelope ever since. He is 

 chairman emeritus of the Antelope Specialist Group of the 

 IUCN (World Conservation Union). Among his original con- 

 tributions is the hypothesis that where natural selection favors 

 mixed-sex herds, differences in appearance between males and females are mini- 

 mized ("The Significance of Horns and Other Male Secondary Sexual Charac- 

 ters in Female Bovids," Applied Animal Behaviour Science 29:403-51, 1991). He is 

 awaiting test results of another original hypothesis, that estrus in female western 

 white-bearded wildebeests is synchronized by the calls of rutting bulls. Estes lives 

 in New Hampshire, where he is working on a book about his favorite animal. 



After spending ten years as a roadie in the music business, STUART 

 BEARHOP ("Change in the Air," page 36) decided to pursue his 

 other longstanding passion — natural history, particularly birds. 

 After earning his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the Uni- 

 versity of Glasgow, he became a lecturer at Queens University 

 Belfast, in Northern Ireland, where he is currently based. 

 Bearhop's main research interests are foraging ecology and avian 

 migration. In addition to examining migration patterns in European black- 

 caps, he is studying the impact ferrets have had on ground-nesting birds after the 

 ferrets were introduced to an island oft the northern coast of Ireland to control 

 rabbits. He is also using isotope ratios and GPS technology to pinpoint the 

 foraging patterns and mating locations of albatrosses. 



Last year, after investigating how climate change is affecting high- 

 alpine areas, KEVIN KRAJICK ("Living the High Life," page 44) 

 was invited to join a group of biologists on a "peak-hopping" 

 expedition in the Andes. A New York City— based journalist who 

 specializes in science and the environment, Krajick is used to nat- 

 ural extremes, having traversed sea ice, climbed to the tops of the 

 world's tallest trees, and descended to the bottom of the deepest 

 mines. His previous articles for Natural History include "The Crystal Fuel" (May 

 1997), about the presence of methyl hydrates in the ocean floor, which won the 

 American Geophysical Union's Walter Sullivan Award for ExceUence in Science 

 Journalism. Widely published in magazines and newspapers, Krajick is also the 

 author of Barren Land: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic 

 (W.H. Freeman, 2001). The book tells the real-life adventure of two small-time 

 prospectors who discovered a great diamond mine in Canada's far north. 



3 eter Brown Editor-in-Chief 



Mary Beth Abcrlm 

 Executive Editor 



Steven R. Black 

 Art Director 



Board of Editors 

 Erin Espelie. Rebecca Kessler, 

 Mary Knight. Vittono Maestro, Dolly Setton 



Geoffrey Wowk Assistant Art Director 

 Graciela Flores Editor-at-Large 

 Ciara Curtin, Krystin N. Mementowski, 

 Edyta Zielinska Interns 



Contributing Editors 

 Robert Anderson. Avis Lang, Charles Liu, 

 Laurence A. Marschall, Richard Milner, 

 Robert H. Mohlenbrock, Joe Rao, Stephan Reebs, 

 Judy A. Rice, Adam Summers, Neil deGrasse Tyson 



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NATURAL HISTORY September 2006 



