Robert c stebbins biography of rory

American herpetologist

Robert Cyril Stebbins (March 31, 1915 – Sept 23, 2013) was an Dweller herpetologist and illustrator known in line for his field guides and favourite books as well as realm studies of reptiles and amphibians. His Field Guide to Colourfulness Reptiles and Amphibians, first in print in 1966, is still wise the definitive reference of sheltered kind, owing to both say publicly quality of the illustrations flourishing the comprehensiveness of the contents.

A professor of zoology resort to the University of California, City, for over 30 years, prohibited was the first curator look up to herpetology at the Museum cut into Vertebrate Zoology, a 1949 Altruist fellow, and author of entrance 70 scientific articles. His betrayal of the ring species fact in Ensatina salamanders is compressed a textbook example of speciation, and he performed extensive investigation on the parietal eye learn reptiles.

He produced nature flicks, supported science education in head grades, and organized conservation efforts that aided in the fading away of the 1994 California Wilderness Protection Act. After retirement agreed continued to paint, collect specialism notes, and write books. Stebbins is commemorated in the wellordered names of three species: Batrachoseps stebbinsi, the Tehachapi slender salamander; Anniella stebbinsi, a legless lizard; and Ambystoma tigrinum stebbinsi, righteousness endangered Sonora tiger salamander.

Early life

Robert Stebbins was indwelling on March 31, 1915, hold Chico, California, to parents Cyril Adelbert and Louise Stebbins (née Beck). His father, born retort Wisconsin of English descent,^[1][2] was an instructor at Chico Shape Normal School who had further published on birds and economy, stressing the importance of farming in education.

The oldest resolve seven children, young Robert grew up learning about local likely and exploring the wildlife delineate Northern California. His mother, congenital in Switzerland and educated go off the Normal School,^[1] instilled out sense of artistry in Parliamentarian, painting pictures for Robert tolerate his siblings in her afford time.

When Stebbins was vii, his family moved to honesty San Francisco Bay Area, site his father worked on agrarian curriculum for children and outright at the University of Calif., Berkeley. Around the age noise nine, his family moved hard by Southern California, living first staging Pomona, then in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles.

Stebbins spent hold your horses hiking in the nearby Santa Monica Mountains, exploring the flora and fauna and amassing a collection sight bird and mammal specimens which he prepared and mounted woman. Stebbins attended North Hollywood Lofty School, where his father coached hygiene and agriculture. Robert calibrated in 1933. He discovered surmount artistic talents around sixteen stage old.

His early work consisted of cartoons: he drew illustrations on classmates' clothing and unbidden cartoons to youth magazines, amiable several awards.

University and early life (1933–1945)

Shortly after graduating high institute, Stebbins enrolled in the Home of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He initially majored in cultured engineering, thinking it a worthier career option than biology, on the contrary became unhappy with the announcement.

Struggling with poor performance explode health issues related to innate heart problems, he took dinky leave for year and simple half. During his time row recuperation, he turned his distinction back to natural history, arm was persuaded to return confine UCLA by Raymond Cowles, clean up biology professor there. Stebbins shared with enthusiasm despite the alleged lack of job security, remarking in 1985: "I was careful because of the Great Finish with, but I was determined give out pursue biology even if inlet meant standing on a intersection with a tin cup." Good taste switched his major to biology and graduated in 1940 comprehend highest honors.

After graduating, Stebbins stop working his time between a season job as a naturalist monkey Lassen Volcanic National Park come first pursuing graduate school at UCLA.

Over the next few eld he also obtained teaching authorization in junior college, high institute, and elementary education. Stebbins primarily planned to study birds, be infatuated with an eye towards roadrunners, on the other hand felt the field of ornithology was too crowded, while herpetology, the study of reptiles captain amphibians, offered more opportunities commissioner new research.

Cowles became culminate graduate advisor. The main high spot of Stebbins' graduate research was the biology of fringe-toed lizards, a group of sand-dwelling lizards of the American Southwest. Plump for his master's degree (completed epoxy resin 1942) he studied the body structure of the nasal passages of the lizards, documenting play a role detail the looped, horseshoe-shaped composition of the nasal passages divagate functions as a u-trap, taboo sand grains from being indrawn while the lizards lay secret at the sand's surface.^[8] Dominion Ph.D dissertation (completed in 1943) further explored the anatomical, activity, and physiological adaptations of greatness lizards.^[9] During this time dirt also published on the selfcontrol of the sidewinder rattlesnake, paramount, with his father, produced match up field guides to birds, equipping illustrations to his father's words.

Their first book, What Meat is That?, was pressed rejoinder the family garage. Stebbins thoughtful his father "a pioneer lady sorts in the extensive copious of drawings in teaching evident history," a tradition he posterior strove to continue in emperor own works.

On June 8, 1941, Stebbins married Anna-rose Cooper, who would eventually type the subject of all of Stebbins' green guides.^[12] Part of their honeymoon was spent camping in primacy Owens Valley of southeastern California.

Career (1945–1978)

In 1945 Stebbins was chartered an assistant professor of biology at the University of Calif., Berkeley, and became the be in first place curator of herpetology at justness Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, swing he would remain throughout ruler career.

The first faculty partaker to teach herpetology at Bishop, he wrote new lab manuals, created the herpetology teaching grade, and co-taught a popular scope on vertebrate natural history.

Ring breed in salamanders

Stebbins soon became attentive in Ensatina salamanders, which come about from British Columbia to Baja California and are present acquit yourself both the Sierra Nevada slab Coast Ranges of California nevertheless absent in the Central Vale.

Finding the salamanders in Metropolis very different from the incline he was used to amaze in the mountains of South California, he embarked upon well-ordered research program examining color differences throughout California. In his contingent monograph, published in 1949, smartness proposed that the color varieties—many previously regarded as distinct species—were actually various races or cast of a single species saunter in most locations interbreed place two forms co-occur, creating hybrids that partially resemble both forms.

However, at the southern string of the Central Valley, ring the Sierra foothill populations take on into contact with those confiscate the Coast Range, the populations do not interbreed, instead close as distinct species.

That phenomenon is known as unornamented ring speciation, with different populations representing different stages of speciation, the process by which connotation species becomes two. Zoologist Traitor Grobman called Stebbins' research "without doubt, the most outstanding announce of a genus of Dweller salamanders that has yet appeared."^[16] The Ensatina complex has bent the focus of research by any chance since, and is a about used textbook example of evolutionary processes.

Reptilian parietal eye

Stebbins' early trench with lizards in the austral California desert led to topping series of papers from excellence 1950s through the 1970s nosey the parietal eye of reptiles (also called the "third eye", a tiny light-sensitive organ toil the forehead) and the allied pineal gland, both of which are now known to manipulate circadian rhythms.

Aided by span Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship from authority National Science Foundation, Stebbins allow colleagues found that lizards be in connection with the parietal eye surgically lessen changed their behavior: they became active much earlier in dignity day, spent more time newest the sun, and remained hidden much later than control lizards.

Further studies over the close few decades focused on high-mindedness parietal eye of the diapsid, the pineal gland's effects formula lizard reproductive behavior, and parietal skull openings in fossil "mammal-like reptiles" such as Lystrosaurus.^[19] Consummate work had implications beyond slither biology: Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod, after reading the work provide Stebbins and others, began experimentation the pineal gland in mammals, with emphasis on the termination of melatonin on activity cycles.

Melatonin has since been intense to influence human health. Stebbins was proud of his parietal and pineal work, calling show somebody the door "possibly the single piece freedom research which gives me loftiness most satisfaction."

Other research, conservation, perch field guides

In 1949 Stebbins standard a Guggenheim Fellowship that lawful him to extend his studies throughout the western United States and to collect enough issue to begin preparing his greatest amphibian field manuals.

The regulate of these to appear was Amphibians of Western North America (1951, University of California Press), covering the U.S. and Canada roughly west of the 102nd meridian. Praised for its unmitigatedness as well as its illustrations,^[22][23] the book "unquestionably provides extra information concerning the 51 category ...

covered than any previous it," wrote Charles M. Bogert: "The maps provided for inculcate species and subspecies are keep down the whole the most minute and accurate of any for this reason far published."^[23] Stebbins' second herpetological field guide, Amphibians and Reptiles of Western North America (1954, McGraw-Hill), was similarly praised.^[24]

In 1964 Stebbins visited the Galápagos Islands on a research expedition scold studied the ecology and command of marine iguanas and john lizards.

Also on the journey was Roger Tory Peterson, who recalled "While the rest read were enjoying high adventure redistribute the more remote islands beginning sea-girt rocks, he patiently snared 200 frisky lizards with trig noose of thread suspended newcomer disabuse of a rod. He took their cloacal temperatures, marked them decree dye, and then dosed them with radioactive iodine, which enabled him to locate the evasive reptiles later with a Physicist counter."^[25][27] In 1966, Stebbins crumble what became his best-known tome, A Field Guide to Tall tale Reptiles and Amphibians (Peterson Interest Guides), which Peterson called "a classic ...

one of authority most beautiful as well gorilla scholarly works in the series".

Stebbins was also committed to instruction and conservation. He made obsequies on the TV series Science in Action, traveled to Continent to promote science education, forward chaired a U.C. elementary high school science project which recommended make certain science be taught to dynasty as early as six.^[28] Bring conjunction with the Sierra Billy he produced two educational films: Nature Next Door (1962) jaunt No Room for Wilderness? (1967).

Stebbins co-authored revisions of grandeur widely used textbooks General Zoology (5th ed.,1972; 6th ed., 1979) and Elements of Zoology (4th ed., 1974), books originally unavoidable by Tracy Storer and Parliamentarian Usinger.^[29]

In the late 1960s Stebbins became concerned about the impacts that increasingly popular off-road mechanism (ORV) driving was having shed desert ecosystems of southern California—witnessing environmental degradation in some oppress the same places he challenging studied during graduate school—and became actively involved in over spruce decade of conservation efforts.

Stebbins and colleagues studied the discrepancy of organisms in and be revealed ORV areas, communicated research think a lot of Bureau of Land Management corridors of power, and petitioned President Jimmy Porter to limit all-terrain vehicle exercise in deserts.^[30] Stebbins faced claimant from ORV riders and their lobbyists: American Motorcyclist magazine hollered him a "staunch abolitionist mission the war against motorized vehicles in the desert."^[32] Stebbins' efforts eventually helped secure the short-lived of the California Desert Barrier Act of 1994 which measure the Mojave National Preserve nearby elevated Joshua Tree and Sortout Valley from national monuments lock more protected national parks.^[33] Conduct yourself 1998 Stebbins was recognized jagged the U.S.

Congress by Retailer George Miller and the Contra Costa Times as one in shape 10 environmental leaders deemed "national treasures" for their activism.^[34]

Other exploration included field work in Colombia, South Africa, and Australia, bear the description of several species: the Jemez Mountains salamander, meridional torrent salamander, yellow-eyed ensatina, president the panamint alligator lizard.

Duo salamanders were named in reward honor during his time excite Berkeley: the Tehachapi slender poker (Batrachoseps stebbinsi) and the Sonora tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum stebbinsi). Over his 32 years contempt Berkeley, Stebbins was the doctor to 29 graduate students, together with Wade Fox, Richard G.

Zweifel, and R. Bruce Bury. Go on a goslow his retirement from UC Metropolis in 1978, Stebbins was awarded the highest faculty honor, goodness Berkeley Citation.

Retirement years (1978–2013)

After bashful, Stebbins remained active in canvas, conservation, and education, and extended to make natural history text.

He revised his well-known skull widely used Field Guide spontaneous 1985 and again in 2003. He co-wrote the non-specialist emergency supply A Natural History of Amphibians with former student Nathan Cohen in 1997, and revised her highness Field Guide to California Amphibians and Reptiles in 2012, unwanted items new contributions by Samuel McGinnis, another former student.

In 2009 he produced Connecting With Nature: A Naturalist's Perspective, a notebook intended to help connect posterity with nature. He took with art lessons, broadened his foray matter to include landscapes, Someone wildlife, portraits, and still lifes, and took up the funny business, which he had studied decades earlier.

His paintings have antediluvian shown and sold in galleries and museums in Berkeley, Direction Springs, and Oregon.

Stebbins was neat fellow of the California Faculty of Sciences, which awarded him its highest honor, the Fellowship Medal, in 1991.^[37]

Stebbins died catch age 98 at his countryside in Eugene, Oregon on Sep 23, 2013, having been populate declining health over the former year.^[38] He was survived brush aside his wife and three children.^[33] Only one week before death, he was honored mull it over the scientific name of uncomplicated newly described species of intoxicated lizard, Anniella stebbinsi.^[39] His composed field notes, comprising over 35 bound volumes, are archived intricate the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

The "Stebbins"

Stebbins' book A Field Handbook to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, first published in 1966 skull revised in 1985, 2003, delighted 2018, has widely been believed "the bible of the field" for American herpetologists.^[30][33] Often referred to simply as "Stebbins", high-mindedness book has educated and carried away generations of naturalists and herpetologists.

On the impact of grandeur guide, professor Samuel Sweet foothold UC Santa Barbara stated "Before that book, if people went out to look for snakes, it was so they could gather them up to exchange to pet shops or reasonable show off to their buddies. What [Stebbins] did was revealing make a transition to uncut similar situation as bird regard, where it became OK get into the swing just look at the animals and leave them alone."^[38] Guaranteed 2017 the book was rank #7 in BookFinder.com's "out-of-print folk tale in demand", a list pointer the most searched for out-of-print titles.^[41]

In 1966, the Houghton-Mifflin Run first published A Field Conduct to Western Reptiles and Amphibians as part of its Peterson Field Guide series.

While with some illustrations from Stebbins' former books, the high quality point toward the artwork was immediately solemn, as was the quality deliver thoroughness of the writing.^[42] Realist David B. Wake, then take up the University of Chicago on the other hand later to work with Stebbins at Berkeley, considered the inimitable "serious defect" to be shirking of any coverage of snake-bite first aid.

Wake also distinguished that the geographic area unmoving left a gap ranging depart from 75 miles to over Cardinal miles wide when paired touch upon the earlier Peterson Guide resign yourself to eastern reptiles and amphibians newborn Roger Conant.^[42]

The second edition, available in 1985, included several downs such as 37 new individual, 12 new plates of illustrations, the inclusion of endemic genus of the Baja California chersonese, and new common names elect to enhance clarity.

In wreath 1986 review, Sweet remarked empathy the frankness of imperfect knowledge: "For the first time incredulity have a field guide put off indicates clearly which taxonomic interpretations are tentative and where distributions and life history features stay behind poorly known."^[43] Concerned about nobleness impact of over-collecting, Stebbins concentrated coverage of collecting and responsibility animals, and also removed pure section on handling venomous snakes.

The third edition, published in 2003, included 36 new species stream several new paintings.^[44] Stebbins deemed keeping up-to-date with current controlled literature the most daunting pinch due to the volume matching recent publications.

The fourth road was published posthumously in 2018, with Samuel McGinnis as co-author. It covers 332 species compared to the third edition's 281, a result of taxonomic vary in the preceding 15 years,^[45] although only two of decency newly included species are illustrated.^[46]

Books

• Cyril A.

  Stebbins; —— (1941). What Bird is That?. Van Nuys, CA: Valley Vista Press.

• Cyril Fastidious. Stebbins; —— (1942). Birds conjure Lassen Volcanic National Park gift Vicinity. Van Nuys, CA: Hole Vista Press.
• Loye H. Miller; —— (1947). Birds of the Collegiate, University of California Los Angeles.

  University of California Press.

• —— (1951). Amphibians of Western North America. University of California Press.
• —— (1954). Amphibians and Reptiles of Imaginativeness North America. New York: McGraw-Hill Press.
• —— (1960). Reptiles and Amphibians of the San Francisco Shout Region.

  University of California Press.

• Alden H. Miller; —— (1964). The Lives of Desert Animals in good health Joshua Tree National Monument. Academia of California Press.
• —— (1966). Field Guide to Western Reptiles stream Amphibians (1st ed.). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co. 2nd ed., 1985; 3rd ed., 2003; 4th ed., 2018
• —— (1972).

  California Amphibians and Reptiles. Academy of California Press.

• Tracy I. Storer; Robert L. Usinger; —— Crook W. Nybakken (1972). General Zoology (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Press.
• Cyril A. Stebbins; —— (1974). Birds of Yosemite National Park. Falls National Park: Yosemite Natural Description Association.
• —— Nathan W.

  Cohen (1997). A Natural History of Amphibians. Princeton University Press. ISBN .

• —— (2009). Connecting With Nature: A Naturalist's Perspective. National Science Teachers Association.
• —— Samuel M. McGinnis (2012). Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of California (Revised ed.).

  University believe California Press.

Films

• Nature Next Door. Sierra Club, National Press. Palo Low, California. (1962)
• No Room for Wilderness? Lawrence Dawson Productions, San Francisco. (1967)

Notes

References

Further reading

External links