Abstract
Porto Alegre was already a big city when I was born in 1961. Some time before my parents’ wedding, my grandmother Morena (née Adelina) had her house remodeled into an upstairs–downstairs duplex, and the upper floor was designed for the newlyweds. She also had the entire backyard paved with a mosaic of uneven pieces of tricolored ceramic tiles. According to my mother Isolde, grandma was tired of the “dirt” that was dragged into the house under everybody’s shoes. A few planters were left along the walls to house Sansevieria, Asparagus, and a Rhapis clump. Introduced European house sparrows roosted on a tall Dracaena that was fragrant at night when in bloom. Grandma also had a few large concrete planters cast to resemble tree trunks where Anthurium plants grew. From our house, the distant noise of a sawmill could be heard all day, and there was also the hustle and bustle of a Volkswagen car dealership located across the street. How could a biologist emerge from such an urban place?
Ó grande tempo
O que é meu está guardado
Não está grudado no céu
nem colado no futuro
Só sei que contigo está seguro
Excerpt from Grande tempo, by Fatima Guedes
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Notes
- 1.
Mario Guimarães Ferri: Brazilian passionate botanist, pioneer ecologist, and gifted artist. Guimarães Ferri was a professor at Universidade de São Paulo.
- 2.
Aldo Araújo: Brazilian geneticist, also interested in science history. Araújo initiated a new era of butterfly research in Southern Brazil by teaching us to focus on evolution and natural history.
- 3.
Father Pio Buck S. J.: Swiss immigrant. Father Pio was the director of Museu Anchieta, where he developed a regional insect collection. He was also a close collaborator with botanists from a local Jesuit university.
- 4.
Jocélia Grazia: Brazilian entomologist, who works on Heteroptera and true bugs in the family Pentatomidae in particular. Grazia was a true mentor to many students, myself included.
- 5.
Alexander Klots: American lepidopterist, well known by his field guides to the butterflies of North America.
- 6.
Karl Jordan: German entomologist, who worked with Walter Rothschild and specialized on Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Siphonaptera.
- 7.
Howard Hinton: British entomologist, who worked on many groups but was fascinated by beetles. Hinton was a gifted morphologist and an early proponent of continental drift.
- 8.
Charles Darwin: British naturalist, whose work was a paradigm shift in biology. His voyages and interactions with other researchers led to the proposal of natural selection as a mechanism of evolutionary change, among many other important contributions.
- 9.
Henry Walter Bates: British naturalist and explorer. Bates travelled through the Amazon forest and described mimicry in butterflies among many other natural history accounts.
- 10.
Alfred Russell Wallace: British naturalist and explorer. Wallace’s voyages through the Amazon and the Malay Archipelago allowed him to conceptualize natural selection independently from Darwin.
- 11.
J. B. S. Haldane: British-born Indian naturalized evolutionary biologist. Haldane developed both statistical methods and theoretical models still in use today.
- 12.
Ronald Fisher: British statistician and evolutionary biologist. Fisher’s contributions to statistics have been used in all fields of science (e.g., analysis of variance) and he spearheaded the modern evolutionary synthesis along with Haldane, Stebbins, and Simpson, among others.
- 13.
G. Ledyard Stebbins: American botanist and geneticist. His integrative studies of plants were groundbreaking. Stebbins helped develop the modern evolutionary synthesis.
- 14.
George G. Simpson: American paleontologist, who was influential in the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis. Simpson was an expert on mammals and their global distribution.
- 15.
Ernst Mayr: German/American ornithologist and evolutionary biologist. Mayr expanded and popularized Theodosius Dobzhansky’s biological species concept and pioneered studies of speciation.
- 16.
Verne Grant: American botanist. He made important contributions to pollination ecology, plant genetics, and evolutionary theory.
- 17.
Keith Brown: American/Brazilian chemist and self-taught butterfly biologist. Brown is famous for his studies of heliconiine and ithomiine butterflies. He greatly influenced the study of butterfly biology in Brazil.
- 18.
Woody Benson: American/Brazilian butterfly biologist. Benson’s evolutionary approach to butterfly biology and species interactions (e.g., mimicry) is internationally recognized.
- 19.
João Vasconcellos Neto: Brazilian biologist, who works on the ecology of insect–plant interactions.
- 20.
Dick Vane-Wright: British butterfly biologist. Dick has published on numerous aspects of butterfly biology, from systematics to mimicry. He continues to be active in the field.
- 21.
Phil Ackery: British butterfly biologist. Phil worked at the Natural History Museum where he developed his classification of butterflies and their host plants in addition to helping every researcher who needed access to the collection.
- 22.
Olaf Mielke: Brazilian butterfly taxonomist. Mielke has published on several groups of Lepidoptera and specializes on skippers.
- 23.
Mirna Casagrande: Brazilian butterfly taxonomist. Casagrande’s work mostly focuses on taxonomy and natural history of Brassolini.
- 24.
Miriam Becker: Brazilian ecologist who worked at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.
- 25.
Richard Southwood: British ecologist and zoologist. His influential work focused on population and community ecology.
- 26.
Roberto Reis: fish systematist. Reis’ research focuses mostly on catfishes, and he is a professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul.
- 27.
Cyril Clarke: British physician, lepidopterist, and geneticist. Together with Philip Sheppard, he pioneered genetics studies of Papilionid butterflies and the peppered moth.
- 28.
Thomas Lewinsohn: Brazilian ecologist. His research initially focused on insect–plant interactions but now also encompasses community diversity and conservation.
- 29.
Larry Gilbert: American butterfly biologist. Gilbert’s research on Heliconius butterflies spans the fields of ecology, evolution, and genetics.
- 30.
Bob Marquis: American evolutionary ecologist. Marquis’ research focuses on tritrophic interactions of plant–herbivore systems and the ecology of plant resistance against herbivores.
- 31.
Mark Scriber: American butterfly ecologist. Scriber’s research interests include nutritional ecology and insect–plant interactions, mechanisms of host plant resistance and insect counteradaptations, and color polymorphisms, among several other topics.
- 32.
Lissy Coley: American evolutionary ecologist. Coley works on the role of defenses in protecting plants from damage by herbivores and pathogens.
- 33.
Doug Futuyma: American evolutionary biologist. Futuyma’s research ranges from insect–plant interactions to coevolution and sexual selection. His books are standards for students of evolution.
- 34.
Mike C. Singer: British/American butterfly behavioral ecologist. Singer’s studies of host plant preferences in Euphydryas editha butterflies span several decades in California and constitute milestones in evolutionary ecology of insect–plant interactions.
- 35.
Nancy Greig: American biologist. Greig is the director of the Cockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
- 36.
Phil DeVries: American butterfly biologist and ecologist. Phil is a keen and eclectic field naturalist. He is best known for his work on butterflies of Costa Rica, symbiotic associations between riodinid caterpillars and ants, and the community diversity studies of fruit-feeding butterflies.
- 37.
Peng Chai: Chinese/American biologist. Currently senior biostatistician at MDS Pharma Services, Lincoln, NE. Peng’s butterfly palatability experiments and flight morphology studies are a landmark in butterfly biology.
- 38.
Bob Srygley: American biologist, who worked on butterfly flight and migration in Panama. Srygley is a research scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) working on Mormon cricket and grasshopper management in addition to butterflies.
- 39.
Evandro Gama de Oliveira: Brazilian butterfly biologist, who worked on butterfly flight and migration in Brazil and Panama. Oliveira’s research also includes community ecology of fruit-feeding butterflies.
- 40.
Marcio Zikán Cardoso: Brazilian butterfly biologist whose research focuses on the evolutionary ecology of Heliconius butterflies.
- 41.
Mirian Medina Hay-Roe: Peruvian/American butterfly researcher, who works on several aspects of Heliconius biology at the University of Florida.
- 42.
Rev. Arthur Miles-Moss: British vicar, artist, and amateur lepidopterist. His Parish spanned the Brazilian Amazon, which allowed him to travel throughout the region collecting and rearing butterflies.
- 43.
Miriam Rothschild: British amateur entomologist. Rothschild was an accomplished expert on fleas and made important contributions to the study of chemical ecology of Lepidoptera.
- 44.
Bernard d’Abrera: Australian amateur lepidopterist. d’Abrera is best known for his series of volumes on the butterfly fauna of the world.
- 45.
Jim Mallet: butterfly evolutionary biologist. Mallet’s research focuses on Heliconius mimicry complexes.
- 46.
Sandy Knapp: American botanist. Knapp is a specialist on the family Solanaceae, especially in the Neotropics.
- 47.
George Beccaloni: British entomologist. Beccaloni studied Neotropical ithomiine butterflies for his PhD but now focuses on his real passion: cockroaches.
- 48.
Lt. Col. John Eliot: British amateur lepidopterist, specialist in Oriental butterflies, and editor of Corbet and Pendlebury’s The Butterflies of the Malay Peninsula.
- 49.
Niels Kristensen: Danish comparative morphologist and systematist. Kristensen’s knowledge of structure and function spans the entire order Lepidoptera.
- 50.
Thomas Simonsen: Danish comparative morphologist and systematist. Simonsen was Niels Kristensen’s student and has worked on both butterflies and moths.
- 51.
George Austin: American lepidopterist. Austin collected butterflies throughout the Neotropics, was thoroughly dedicated to collection organization and curation, and did transect counts in his own backyard every weekend. He was the foremost North American authority on Neotropical Hesperiidae.
- 52.
Niklas Wahlberg: Finnish butterfly systematist. Wahlberg pioneered modern phylogenetic studies of Nymphalid butterflies using deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence data. He is also interested in evolutionary diversification and biogeography of Lepidoptera in general.
- 53.
Russ Lande: American evolutionary biologist. Lande’s work spans quantitative genetics, evolutionary mechanisms (genetic drift, selection), speciation, and phenotypic plasticity. He also works on community diversity in collaboration with Phil DeVries and other researchers.
- 54.
André V. L. Freitas: Brazilian butterfly biologist. Freitas was a student of Keith Brown. He is a prolific researcher, who has worked on the systematics and natural history of several Neotropical groups.
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Penz, C. (2015). Follow the Breadcrumb Trail. In: Dyer, L., Forister, M. (eds) The Lives of Lepidopterists. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20457-4_3
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