American herpetologist
Robert Cyril Stebbins (March 31, 1915 – Sept 23, 2013) was an American herpetologist and illustrator known connote his field guides and popular books as well as his studies of reptiles and amphibians. His Field Guide to Sandwich Reptiles and Amphibians, first published in 1966, is still advised the definitive reference of its kind, owing to both interpretation quality of the illustrations and the comprehensiveness of the text. A professor of zoology at the University of California, Metropolis, for over 30 years, he was the first curator remind herpetology at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, a 1949 Altruist fellow, and author of over 70 scientific articles. His notice of the ring species phenomenon in Ensatina salamanders is at the present time a textbook example of speciation, and he performed extensive exploration on the parietal eye of reptiles. He produced nature films, supported science education in primary grades, and organized conservation efforts that aided in the passing of the 1994 California Waste Protection Act. After retirement he continued to paint, collect attitude 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, picture endangered Sonora tiger salamander.
Stebbins' parents Cyril and Louise inspired his interests in nature and art.
Robert Stebbins was innate on March 31, 1915, in Chico, California, to parents Cyril Adelbert and Louise Stebbins (née Beck). His father, born run to ground Wisconsin of English descent,[1][2] was an instructor at Chico Board Normal School who had also published on birds and agribusiness, stressing the importance of gardening in education. The oldest collide seven children, young Robert grew up learning about local likely and exploring the wildlife of Northern California. His mother, calved in Switzerland and educated at the Normal School,[1] instilled a sense of artistry in Robert, painting pictures for Robert enthralled his siblings in her spare time. When Stebbins was heptad, his family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where his father worked on agricultural curriculum for children and infinite at the University of California, Berkeley. Around the age disregard nine, his family moved to Southern California, living first confine Pomona, then in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. Stebbins spent put on ice hiking in the nearby Santa Monica Mountains, exploring the wildlife and amassing a collection of bird and mammal specimens which he prepared and mounted himself. Stebbins attended North Hollywood Lofty School, where his father taught hygiene and agriculture. Robert calibrated in 1933. He discovered his artistic talents around sixteen days old. His early work consisted of cartoons: he drew illustrations on classmates' clothing and contributed cartoons to youth magazines, heavenly several awards.
Shortly after graduating high grammar, Stebbins enrolled in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He initially majored in civil engineering, thinking it a unravel career option than biology, but became unhappy with the announcement. Struggling with poor performance and health issues related to nonheritable heart problems, he took a leave for year and a half. During his time in recuperation, he turned his distinction back to natural history, and was persuaded to return finish off UCLA by Raymond Cowles, a biology professor there. Stebbins returned with enthusiasm despite the perceived lack of job security, remarking in 1985: "I was cautious because of the Great Lay aside, but I was determined to pursue biology even if overtake meant standing on a corner with a tin cup." Prohibited switched his major to zoology and graduated in 1940 joint highest honors.
After graduating, Stebbins split his time between a summertime job as a naturalist at Lassen Volcanic National Park bracket pursuing graduate school at UCLA. Over the next few days he also obtained teaching credentials in junior college, high high school, and elementary education. Stebbins initially planned to study birds, fitting an eye towards roadrunners, but felt the field of ornithology was too crowded, while herpetology, the study of reptiles spell amphibians, offered more opportunities for new research. Cowles became his graduate advisor. The main focus of Stebbins' graduate research was the biology of fringe-toed lizards, a group of sand-dwelling lizards of the American Southwest. For his master's degree (completed occupy 1942) he studied the anatomical structure of the nasal passages of the lizards, documenting in detail the looped, horseshoe-shaped configuration of the nasal passages that functions as a u-trap, preventing sand grains from being inhaled while the lizards lay concealed at the sand's surface.[8] His Ph.D dissertation (completed in 1943) further explored the anatomical, behavioral, and physiological adaptations of rendering lizards.[9] During this time he also published on the doings of the sidewinder rattlesnake, and, with his father, produced fold up field guides to birds, providing illustrations to his father's text. Their first book, What Bird is That?, was pressed imprisoned the family garage. Stebbins considered his father "a pioneer reproach sorts in the extensive use of drawings in teaching clear history," a tradition he later strove to continue in his own works.
On June 8, 1941, Stebbins married Anna-rose Cooper, who would eventually type the text of all of Stebbins' considerably guides.[12] Part of their honeymoon was spent camping in representation Owens Valley of southeastern California.
In 1945 Stebbins was chartered an assistant professor of zoology at the University of Calif., Berkeley, and became the first curator of herpetology at interpretation Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where he would remain throughout his career. The first faculty member to teach herpetology at Bishop, he wrote new lab manuals, created the herpetology teaching solicitation, and co-taught a popular course on vertebrate natural history.
Stebbins soon became interested in Ensatina salamanders, which take place from British Columbia to Baja California and are present discharge both the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges of California but absent in the Central Valley. Finding the salamanders in Metropolis very different from the ones he was used to confuse in the mountains of Southern California, he embarked upon a research program examining color differences throughout California. In his resulting monograph, published in 1949, he proposed that the color varieties—many previously regarded as distinct species—were actually various races or species of a single species that in most locations interbreed where two forms co-occur, creating hybrids that partially resemble both forms. However, at the southern edge of the Central Valley, where the Sierra foothill populations come into contact with those fend for the Coast Range, the populations do not interbreed, instead interim as distinct species. This phenomenon is known as a brainy speciation, with different populations representing different stages of speciation, representation process by which one species becomes two. Zoologist Arnold Grobman called Stebbins' research "without doubt, the most outstanding study earthly a genus of American salamanders that has yet appeared."[16] Say publicly Ensatina complex has been the focus of research ever since, and is a widely used textbook example of evolutionary processes.
Stebbins' early work with lizards in the southern Calif. desert led to a series of papers from the Decade through the 1970s exploring the parietal eye of reptiles (also called the "third eye", a tiny light-sensitive organ on depiction forehead) and the associated pineal gland, both of which splinter now known to influence circadian rhythms. Aided by a Recognizable Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, Stebbins and colleagues found that lizards with the parietal eye surgically removed varied their behavior: they became active much earlier in the allocate, spent more time in the sun, and remained active some later than control lizards. Further studies over the next scarcely any decades focused on the parietal eye of the tuatara, say publicly pineal gland's effects on lizard reproductive behavior, and parietal skull openings in fossil "mammal-like reptiles" such as Lystrosaurus.[19] His stick had implications beyond reptile biology: Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod, associate reading the work of Stebbins and others, began investigating rendering pineal gland in mammals, with emphasis on the effect near melatonin on activity cycles. Melatonin has since been found chance on influence human health. Stebbins was proud of his parietal abide pineal work, calling it "possibly the single piece of exploration which gives me the most satisfaction."
In 1949 Stebbins received a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to extend his studies throughout the western United States station to collect enough material to begin preparing his first aeroplane field manuals. The first of these to appear was Amphibians of Western North America (1951, University of California Press), screening the U.S. and Canada roughly west of the 102nd longitude. Praised for its thoroughness as well as its illustrations,[22][23] picture book "unquestionably provides more information concerning the 51 species ... covered than any preceding it," wrote Charles M. Bogert: "The maps provided for each species and subspecies are on say publicly whole the most detailed and accurate of any thus a good published."[23] Stebbins' second herpetological field guide, Amphibians and Reptiles tip Western North America (1954, McGraw-Hill), was similarly praised.[24]
In 1964 Stebbins visited the Galápagos Islands on a research expedition and planned the ecology and behavior of marine iguanas and lava lizards. Also on the expedition was Roger Tory Peterson, who recalled "While the rest of were enjoying high adventure on description more remote islands and sea-girt rocks, he patiently snared Cardinal frisky lizards with a noose of thread suspended from a rod. He took their cloacal temperatures, marked them with pigment, and then dosed them with radioactive iodine, which enabled him to locate the elusive reptiles later with a Geiger counter."[25][27] In 1966, Stebbins produced what became his best-known book, A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians (Peterson Field Guides), which Peterson called "a classic ... one of the swell beautiful as well as scholarly works in the series".
Stebbins was also committed to education and conservation. He made appearances suspicion the TV series Science in Action, traveled to Asia support promote science education, and chaired a U.C. elementary school discipline project which recommended that science be taught to children whilst early as six.[28] In conjunction with the Sierra Club noteworthy produced two educational films: Nature Next Door (1962) and No Room for Wilderness? (1967). Stebbins co-authored revisions of the extensively used textbooks General Zoology (5th ed.,1972; 6th ed., 1979) enjoin Elements of Zoology (4th ed., 1974), books originally written newborn Tracy Storer and Robert Usinger.[29]
Someday Robert Stebbins may be remembered as the man most responsible for saving what was stay poised of the California desert.[30]: 137
– Richard Louv, The Web of Life
In the late 1960s Stebbins became concerned about the impacts avoid increasingly popular off-road vehicle (ORV) driving was having on barren ecosystems of southern California—witnessing environmental degradation in some of rendering same places he had studied during graduate school—and became actively involved in over a decade of conservation efforts. Stebbins predominant colleagues studied the diversity of organisms in and around ORV areas, communicated research to Bureau of Land Management officials, avoid petitioned President Jimmy Carter to limit all-terrain vehicle use be sure about deserts.[30] Stebbins faced opposition from ORV riders and their lobbyists: American Motorcyclist magazine called him a "staunch abolitionist in representation war against motorized vehicles in the desert."[32] Stebbins' efforts finally helped secure the passing of the California Desert Protection Effect of 1994 which established the Mojave National Preserve and uplifted Joshua Tree and Death Valley from national monuments to author protected national parks.[33] In 1998 Stebbins was recognized in description U.S. Congress by Representative George Miller and the Contra Rib Times as one of 10 environmental leaders deemed "national treasures" for their activism.[34]
Other research included field work in Colombia, Southernmost Africa, and Australia, and the description of several species: rendering Jemez Mountains salamander, southern torrent salamander, yellow-eyed ensatina, and representation panamint alligator lizard. Two salamanders were named in his laurels during his time at Berkeley: the Tehachapi slender salamander (Batrachoseps stebbinsi) and the Sonora tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum stebbinsi). Bridge his 32 years at Berkeley, Stebbins was the advisor terminate 29 graduate students, including Wade Fox, Richard G. Zweifel, favour R. Bruce Bury. Upon his retirement from UC Berkeley epoxy resin 1978, Stebbins was awarded the highest faculty honor, the Metropolis Citation.
After retiring, Stebbins remained active in painting, management, and education, and continued to make natural history observations. Sand revised his well-known and widely used Field Guide in 1985 and again in 2003. He co-wrote the non-specialist book A Natural History of Amphibians with former student Nathan Cohen disintegration 1997, and revised his Field Guide to California Amphibians topmost Reptiles in 2012, with new contributions by Samuel McGinnis, on former student. In 2009 he produced Connecting With Nature: A Naturalist's Perspective, a book intended to help connect children friendliness nature. He took additional art lessons, broadened his subject substance to include landscapes, African wildlife, portraits, and still lifes, soar took up the violin, which he had studied decades sooner. His paintings have been shown and sold in galleries become calm museums in Berkeley, Palm Springs, and Oregon.
Stebbins was a gentleman of the California Academy of Sciences, which awarded him take the edge off highest honor, the Fellows Medal, in 1991.[37]
Stebbins died at quest 98 at his home in Eugene, Oregon on September 23, 2013, having been in declining health over the previous year.[38] He was survived by his wife and three children.[33] One one week before his death, he was honored in rendering scientific name of a newly described species of legless gigolo, Anniella stebbinsi.[39] His collected field notes, comprising over 35 fastened volumes, are archived in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
Stebbins' book A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, leading published in 1966 and revised in 1985, 2003, and 2018, has widely been considered "the bible of the field" need American herpetologists.[30][33] Often referred to simply as "Stebbins", the seamless has educated and inspired generations of naturalists and herpetologists. Persist the impact of the guide, professor Samuel Sweet of UC Santa Barbara stated "Before that book, if people went let somebody have to look for snakes, it was so they could call up them up to sell to pet shops or just communicate off to their buddies. What [Stebbins] did was help fake a transition to a similar situation as bird watching, where it became OK to just look at the animals come to rest leave them alone."[38] In 2017 the book was ranked #7 in BookFinder.com's "out-of-print and in demand", a list of depiction most searched for out-of-print titles.[41]
In 1966, the Houghton-Mifflin Company eminent published A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians by the same token part of its Peterson Field Guide series. While including wearisome illustrations from Stebbins' previous books, the high quality of representation artwork was immediately recognized, as was the quality and thoroughness of the writing.[42] Biologist David B. Wake, then of interpretation University of Chicago but later to work with Stebbins at the same height Berkeley, considered the only "serious defect" to be absence friendly any coverage of snake-bite first aid. Wake also noted give it some thought the geographic area covered left a gap ranging from 75 miles to over 400 miles wide when paired with depiction earlier Peterson Guide to eastern reptiles and amphibians by Roger Conant.[42]
The second edition, published in 1985, included several changes specified as 37 new species, 12 new plates of illustrations, description inclusion of endemic species of the Baja California peninsula, illustrious new common names chosen to enhance clarity. In his 1986 review, Sweet remarked on the frankness of imperfect knowledge: "For the first time we have a field guide that indicates clearly which taxonomic interpretations are tentative and where distributions gleam life history features remain poorly known."[43] Concerned about the fix of over-collecting, Stebbins reduced coverage of collecting and keeping animals, and also removed a section on handling venomous snakes.
The 3rd edition, published in 2003, included 36 new species and some new paintings.[44] Stebbins considered keeping up-to-date with current scientific letters the most daunting task due to the volume of new publications. The fourth edition was published posthumously in 2018, exact Samuel McGinnis as co-author. It covers 332 species compared hint at the third edition's 281, a result of taxonomic changes detainee the preceding 15 years,[45] although only two of the without delay included species are illustrated.[46]