Announcements

The American Society of Naturalists is pleased to announce that Peter and B. Rosemary Grant have been named as Honorary Lifetime Members of the American Society of Naturalists. This award is made to scientists who have made major contributions to the conceptual unification of the biological sciences, which is the ultimate goal of the society. Peter Grant's career began with a doctorate at the University of British Columbia, followed by a post-doctorate at Yale University and faculty positions at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and Princeton University. Rosemary Grant completed her doctorate from Uppsala University during the time they were at Michigan and currently has a faculty position at Princeton University. Peter's earlier work on island birds, competition between rodents, and the empirical assessment of character displacement continues to be quoted, but the Grants are best known for their joint studies on the Galápagos finches, now in their 35th year.

The Grants' contribution to conceptual unification is clear from the way they have considered behavior, genetics, and ecology in developing their understanding of the processes of speciation and adaptive radiation in the finches. For example, measurements of natural selection were accompanied by studies of feeding behavior and competition between species; in this way different patterns of selection from one year to the next could be related not only to an altered resource distribution but also to a changing spectrum of competitors. They showed how the cultural evolution of song is critical to the generation of premating reproductive isolation and hence speciation. With Arhat Abzhanov, they have linked quantitative genetics of beak morphology to developmental differences between species driven by changes in gene expression. A possible role for founder effect speciation was assessed by actually observing a founder event and following the genetic and behavioral consequences for 22 years. The results of these and many other field studies mean that the Darwin's finch radiation is the best understood radiation in the world.

The success of the Grants' dedicated and long-term research is exemplified in their recent short, easy-to-read, and highly recommended book, How and Why Species Multiply (Princeton University Press, 2008), which describes many of the results from the finch study. In their concluding remarks to the book, the Grants state that “nothing in evolutionary biology makes sense except in the light of ecology,” hoping that the “light provided by ecology will neither dim nor go out.” They urge scientists to not forget ecology and behavior even as they get caught up in the expanding world of genetics. This is driven not only by the need to think broadly to understand evolutionary problems, but also by the importance of conserving those few remaining undisturbed environments in the world. As the American Society of Naturalists moves into the 21st century, a naturalist cannot only be someone who studies the natural world, but also should be someone who cares about it and for it (ASN Presidential Address, P. R. Grant, 2000, American Naturalist 155:1–12). In these endeavors, the Grants continue to lead by example.

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