Western Society of Naturalists

Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2005 by then WSN president Mark Carr to honor an outstanding scientist who has been involved in WSN throughout their career and has made an exemplary life-long contribution to increasing our understanding of natural history. The recipient is not requested to make a formal presentation and is recognized with the presentation of a plaque at the annual society meeting.

The nomination and selection are done by the recent suite of WSN Presidents - current president, immediate past president, and president elect.

2008
John and Vicki Pearse
Professor Emeritus of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Research Associate of the Institute of Marine Sciences
University of California, Santa Cruz
pearse@biology.ucsc.edu
vpearse@ucsc.edu

WSN meetings, starting >40 years ago, initiated John & Vicki into a lifetime of active participation in biological societies, communities in which both were destined to become leaders (John, President of WSN, California Academy of Sciences, International Society of Invertebrate Reproduction, Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology; Vicki, President of the American Microscopical Society.) They are passionate about marine invertebrates and have shared this enthusiasm at every opportunity with a multitude of students and other colleagues, through their teaching, editing (e.g, the 7-volume treatise Reproduction of Marine Invertebrates, with Arthur Giese; the journal Invertebrate Biology by Vicki), textbooks (Animals Without Backbones and Living Invertebrates, with Vicki’s parents, Ralph and Mildred Buchsbaum), and other writings. John’s research has spanned reproductive biology, the rocky intertidal, and kelp forest ecology. His favorite animals are echinoderms; Vicki’s are cnidarians and placozoans. The two have worked and published on these and other organisms, both separately and as a team, mostly on the California coast but ranging willingly from tropical to antarctic waters. They haven’t stopped yet.

Paul Dayton at Pinacate Biosphere Reserve

2007
Paul Dayton
Professor of Oceanography
Integrative Oceanography Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego
pdayton@ucsd.edu

As a biological oceanographer, Paul Dayton researches coastal and estuarine habitats, including seafloor (“benthic”) and kelp communities, as well as global fisheries. He has conducted investigations in several parts of the world, including spending 50 months in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, performing research during scuba dives under the ice. The scientific papers resulting from these research projects are largely believed to have set the standard for Antarctic undersea ecology. He has studied nearshore benthic communities in many parts of the world and is presently working on California kelp communities and Antarctic benthic communities. Dayton’s studies also include the impacts of overfishing on marine ecosystems. Besides his own students, the part of his career that gives him the most satisfaction is his contribution to the UC Natural Reserve System.

2006
Robert (Bob) Paine
Professor of Zoology, Emeritus
University of Washington
painert@u.washington.edu

Except for his dissertation research and a postdoc at Scripps Institution (La Jolla), Robert Paine's academic career has been spent at the University of Washington. Persistent themes of his research are the central role of natural history, predation and the related top-down influences (with the necessity of experimental manipulation if one wants to understand ecological processes). Food web structure and the roles of disturbance have been a common focus. Most of Robert's research has been done on exposed, rocky intertidal shores on the outer coast of Washington State, especially Tatoosh Island. His 34 PhD students remain sources of friendship, inspiration and continuing pride. Bob has gone the extra mile in training a lot of students who have become leaders in the field of Natural History.

2005
Joseph (Joe) Connell
Professor of Zoology, Emeritus
Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology
University of California, Santa Barbara
connell@lifesci.lscf.ucsb.edu

How appropriate it was for the WSN to give Joseph Connell the first award because of the sweeping fundamental ecological insights that Joe has pulled from nature in such very different ecosystems. He truly is one of the all time synthetic geniuses in the field of natural history and almost all of his fundamental work came from his appreciation of natural history. Joe joined the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) faculty in 1956, specialized in the study of the ecology of tropical rain forests and coral reefs. He was a research professor of ecology, evolution, and marine biology. Now Emeritus, Joe is interested in long-term studies in ecology with specialties in population biology, community ecology, marine ecology, terrestrial ecology and theoretical ecology.

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