After leaving Greenville College in 1971, I spent five years at the University of Illinois pursuing graduate degrees in Zoology. In 1977 I moved to Carbondale and have spent my entire professional career in the Department of Zoology at Southern Illinois University. I am married to Ingrid Hansen, an artist, and we have an 11-year-old son, Jordan, who enjoys playing the piano and working at Tae-Kwan-Do. We attend the Grace United Methodist Church in Carbondale where I am a Trustee and substitute Sunday School Teacher.

Each year I teach either three or four courses including Ichthyology (the study of fishes), the Diversity of Vertebrates, and Systematic Zoology and Zoogeography. I am planning a new course on curation of zoological collections for the Fall 2001 term. Our Department has about 225 undergraduate majors and about 70-80 full-time graduate students working toward M.S. or PhD degrees. Currently I have 11 graduate students, eight of whom are pursuing the PhD degree.

My research interests include both ecological and systematic relationships of fishes, with emphasis on North American freshwater fishes and neotropical fishes from the Peruvian Amazon. We now have completed four expeditions to the Iquitos region of Peru and have accumulated approximately 4,000 lots of Amazonian fishes for study, including many new country records and several undescribed species.

Recent work of a more local nature centers around the study of federally endangered species, including the relict darter in western Kentucky and the duskytail darter in eastern Kentucky. These studies have shown the need for extensive field efforts in order to understand habitat requirements, spawning periods, and other factors of relevance in managing endangered species.

I am currently working on the descriptions two new species of Noturus (madtom catfishes) from Tennessee (with J. M. Grady and D. J. Eisenhour), a new shiner (Cyprinidae) from Mexico with R. R. Miller of the University of Michigan, and a new Pterolebias from the Peruvian Amazon with Jim Thomerson. With several colleagues I am preparing species accounts for a new "Fishes of Illinois: a Century of Change." Graduate students are pursuing a variety of studies including reproductive biology and larval life history of spring cavefish, taxonomic status of pimelodid and doradid catfishes, natural history of sculpins in Missouri caves, community ecology of fishes in the Cache River, fishes of a high elevation stream in Panama, larval fish ecology of Pool 25, Mississippi River, and nesting biology of black and yellow bullheads.

The SIUC Fluid collection of vertebrates emphasizes freshwater fishes from the Midwest, especially Illinois and Kentucky, neotropical fishes from Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, and life history series of over 30 species of North American freshwater fishes. Also included is a large collection of amphibians and reptiles from the eastern United States, especially Illinois, and many species from Mexico.

There are currently 40,000 catalogued lots of fishes and about 10,000 catalogued lots of amphibians and reptiles totaling about 350,000 specimens. In a recent survey of 118 state, federal, private, and public fish collections in the United States and Canada (Poss and Collette 1995(1):48-70, Copeia), the SIUC collection is ranked in the top 20 of other significant collections below international, national, and regional centers. We are in the top 17 collections for the amount of cataloguing activity, and in the top 15 in terms of numbers of students receiving degrees in a museum environment.

We recently hired a Collection Manager, Jeffrey G. Stewart, through NSF support, to help move and upgrade the collection. The collection is now in a new space which has effectively tripled our room for growth.

As of 1 January 2001, I will serve as President of ASIH, the largest professional society devoted to the scientific study of fishes, amphibians, and reptiles. My term lasts one year and will be followed by service on the Executive Committee for an additional two years.

Pertinent information regarding the Society can be found through the ASIH web site.

SIUC Department of Zoology

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Last updated: 13-Jul-05 / ghw