Vol. 62, No. 3 | August 2017
 

In Memoriam


Professor Sir Paul Patrick Gordon Bateson, FRS March 31, 1938 – August 1, 2017

Written by Susan A. Foster, Clark University, Worcester MA, USA

On August 1, 2017, the world lost a legendary student of animal behavior. Always known as Patrick (or Pat) Bateson, he contributed intellectually to the field of animal behavior at a level well beyond that which most could hope to achieve. He has been perhaps less visible to those on this side of the ocean than in Europe as he spent most of his academic life at Cambridge, always identified himself as an Ethologist, and has truly studied behavior at all of Tinbergen’s four levels. Rather than trying to describe his research interests I will let his most recent web page speak for him:

My main interest is in the development of behaviour, working on the processes that translate genetic and environmental influences into behavioural outcomes. Much of my research has been devoted to imprinting in birds, analysing its effects on young animals and its effect on mate choice in adults. I worked on the neural mechanisms involved in imprinting and also developed a neural net model to draw the behavioural and the physiological work together. I have been particularly interested in recent years in how developmental and behavioural processes impact on evolution. My central research interests have led me to analyse the development of play in cats and study the impact of play on creativity and innovation.  I have been deeply interested in the ethics of using animals in research and in the assessment of pain and suffering. This led me to conduct a study of the welfare aspects of hunting red deer with hounds in the west of England, conduct an inquiry into dog-breeding and review the use of non-human primates in research.

The set of key recent publications Pat listed on his website are the following, illustrating his range nicely (although of course the 340+ publications on his CV illustrate this even more successfully):


    • Bateson, P. & Gluckman, P. (2011) Plasticity, Robustness, Development and Evolution.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Bateson, P. & Martin, P. (2013) Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Bateson, P. & Gluckman, P. (2012) Plasticity and robustness in development and evolution. International Journal of Epidemiology, 41, 219-233.
    • Bateson, P. (2012) Behavioural Biology: The past and a future. Ethology, 118: 216-221.
    • Bateson, P. (2012) The impact of the organism on its descendants. Genetics Research International, 2012, Article ID 640612.
    • Bateson, P.  (2011) Ethical debates about animal suffering and the use of animals in research.  Journal of Consciousness Studies, 18, 186-208.
    • Bateson, P. (2010).  Independent Inquiry into Dog Breeding.  London: Dogs Trust.
    • Bateson, P. (2011) Review of Research using Non-Human Primates. London: Wellcome Trust.


I have tried to think how to articulate Pat’s impact on the field, and have given up. I think if each of you look at the diversity of the publications, each would find a different impact. For me it was Pat’s work on imprinting, and subsequent thinking about the neural bases of plasticity and the evolution of behavior as a plastic phenotype. For others, I expect it would be his research on play behavior or on applied animal behavior (ethics in the study of animal behavior) and animal well-being. I am sure others would see the import of the body of his work in still other ways. His text, written with Paul Martin, Measuring Behaviour, has likely had an impact on us all.

Pat was born in England to parents Richard and Solvi Bateson in1938. He went up to Kings College, Cambridge in 1957 to read Natural Sciences. His career there was successful as he was awarded the Frank Smart Prize in Zoology and earned the only First in the area. While at Kings, he met his wife Dusha Matthews. They married and moved to Stanford where he had been awarded a Harkness Fellowship and then returned to Kings as a Fellow in 1964 where he remained for his career, also serving as elected Provost from 1988 until his retirement in 2003. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983, was knighted in 2003 for his achievements in the field (hence Sir Patrick Bateson), elected President of the Zoological Society of London in 2004, and was awarded the Distinguished Animal Behaviorist Award by the Animal Behavior Society in 2015.

Pat served on a remarkable number of committees in national societies and trusts. These committees have enabled him to bring his considerable knowledge of Ethology to issues as diverse as animal conservation, ethics in medical research, and more generally, to behavior and human wellbeing. He also served as editor for a number of journals, including Animal Behaviour, and as president of ASAB.
Pat’s contributions speak for themselves and to his genuine desire to understand and explore the development and evolution of behavior. I do not believe I have met anyone else with a greater breadth of appreciation for animal behavior. He was truly a grand Ethologist, carrying on the insights of those before him, while continuing to modernize his approaches to the study of animal behavior. He will be deeply missed, not only as a remarkable student of animal behavior, with an insight into the fundamentals of behavior that would be hard to rival- but also as a kind and gentle giant, always willing to share insights and ideas with others.
Patrick Bateson died peacefully on August 1, 2017, with his wife Dusha and daughters Melissa and Anna by his side.

 

William N. Tavolga, Ph.D. February 9, 1922 - April 28, 2017

Written by Zuleyma Tang-Martínez, ABS Historian Photo from Obituary by Arthur Popper

William N. Tavolga, one of the founders of the Animal Behavior Society, died in Sarasota, FL on April 28, 2017. He was almost 95 years old. In addition to being an ABS founder, Bill Tavolga also was a fellow (1968), served as chair of the Public Affairs Committee, and was a frequent participant in ABS meetings for many years.

Bill was born in New York City in 1922. His parents were Russian immigrant musicians who aspired for Bill to become a concert pianist. Bill, however, had different ideas and, from a very early age, showed a strong interest in biology, going on walks, and turning over rocks to see what fascinating creatures he might find under them. He eventually received his Ph.D. in fish reproductive biology from New York University (NYU) in 1949. He then joined the faculty at City College of New York, where he spent his entire career, until retirement in .He also joined the Department of Animal Behavior at the American Museum of Natural History, and subsequently, the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, where he continued to conduct research even after his retirement from CCNY.

Bill was a giant and pioneer in the areas of sensory ecology and fish bioacoustics, who coined the term “Marine BioAcoustics”. In an amusing personal account, he wrote about his discovery that fish make sounds. A colleague asked him it was possible that fish produce sounds during courtship. Bill did not know the answer but decided to test it. He had only an old fashioned microphone that was not waterproof – not to be dissuaded, Bill came up with an ingenious solution: he fitted a condom on the microphone then dropped it next to a male fish (gobie) he was studying; and then, “when we dropped a gravid female into the tank with the male, we could hear little grunting sound pulses, synchronized perfectly with the male's head shakes. I had heard my first fish.” Bioacoustics, 12: 101-104. DOI: 10.1080/09524622.2002.9753662
Prior to this point, it had been assumed that fish neither made, nor could hear, sounds, so Bill thought he was the first to have demonstrated that fish produce sounds. He soon discovered he was wrong. Another scientists, appropriately named Marie Poland Fish had already recorded the sounds of many different fish species - however, her data were classified and a military secret because they had been collected as part of submarine warfare research during WWII. The declassification of this and other related research in the 1950s, opened the door for Bill to expand his own research by performing more complex studies that explored fish sound producing mechanisms, the use of sounds in communication, ultrasonic sounds, and the use of echolocation.

Bill Tavolga was a prolific investigator who worked with many species. In addition to numerous publications in academic journals, he also produced a report for the U.S. Navy that catalogued the sounds, not only of fish, but also of marine mammals and invertebrates. He continued publishing until the end of his life; his last scientific paper was published when he was 92.

Bill also had many other talents and interests. He spoke Russian fluently and wrote the first Russian word processor. He was an aficionado of music and, despite his earlier rebellion, became a talented pianist.
Bill was much loved and respected by all who knew him. His friend and colleague, Arthur Popper describes him as, “an extraordinary teacher, scholar, mentor, and role model”.
The ABS offers condolences to his partner, Paula John, to the rest of his family, and to his many friends and colleagues. His extraordinary contributions to animal behavior and bioacoustics will not be forgotten.
(ZTM is grateful to Dr. Arthur Popper for providing the photograph and information used in this obituary).

Amotz Zahavi, Ph.D. August 14, 1928 – May 12, 2017

Written by Zuleyma Tang-Martínez, ABS Historian Photo from Wikipedia/Internet

Amotz Zahavi, Israel’s legendary animal behaviorist, and the architect of the “handicap principle” has died. Zahavi was born on August 14, 1928, in Petah Tiqva in the British Mandate for Palestine, in what is now Israel. After several years of declining health, he died in Tel Aviv, on May 12, 2017, at the age of 89.

From childhood, Zahavi loved watching birds although he did not know their names and had no field guide to help him identify the different species. He had planned to study agriculture and live in a kibbutz, while keeping bird-watching as a hobby. However, his life-long mentor, Heinrich Mendelssohn, then director of the Tel Aviv Zoo, convinced him that there already were plenty of farmers in Israel, and that he could make a bigger contribution to the fledgling nation by becoming a biologist and ornithologist.

Zahavi obtained his Ph.D. form Tel Aviv University in 1970, subsequently joined the zoology faculty at TAU, and spent most of the rest of his life studying Arabian babblers (a thrush-like bird of the genus Turdoides), along with his spouse, biologist Avishag Zahavi, who was a frequent collaborator. Their field site was in the Arava (Rift Valley) area of the Negev Desert in southern Israel. Arabian babblers are cooperative breeders, forming groups consisting of one breeding pair and helpers who assist with care of the young. Zahavi identified several different types of groups but was particularly intrigued by the “complex groups” in which the helpers were unrelated to the breeders.

In 1975, based on his studies, Zahavi proposed the “handicap principle”. He posited that traits which appear to be detrimental to individuals, and cannot be explained by kin selection, are best understood as “handicaps” that are honest signals of an individual’s quality; such signals are necessarily honest because they are costly and only animals in the best condition and of the highest quality can afford to produce and maintain the signal. Zahavi initially proposed this idea, which was extremely controversial, to explain sexually-selected traits, but he soon expanded it to communication in general and to a vast array of behavioral phenomena (e.g. communication between prey and their predators; helpers in cooperative breeding). In 1997, Amotz and Avishag Zahavi published a review and magnum opus of their idea: The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle (Oxford University Press). By the end of his life, the handicap principle was considered mainstream and was known the world over, even if some remain unconvinced about its general applicability. The handicap hypothesis brings to mind the first time I met Zahavi. We were both attending an international animal behavior conference. Zahavi was a large, imposing man, who could be quite unconventional: Throughout the conference, and in the middle of a speaker’s talk, Zahavi would suddenly jump to his feet, point towards the speaker, and shout out, “Another example of the Handicap Principle” – then he would immediately sit down while the speaker finished the talk. The first few times, I was rather taken aback – then it became humorous (at least for me), and in every talk I attended, I wondered when Zahavi would repeat the performance! Given that this happened at a time when his hypothesis was still very contentious, the tactic seemed to work because, as we listened to presentations, many of us would be internally asking ourselves. “What about the handicap hypothesis? Does it fit in this case?” I relate this story because I always found it to be so “Quintessentially Zahavi”! Zahavi could be a difficult person and was known for his strong opinions - but he also was fervently devoted to his research, to science, and to nature. Ecologist Jonathan (Yoni) Belmaker, a colleague at Tel Aviv University, says, “Amotz Zahavi was a very passionate person and he managed to convey this passion to his students and acquaintances. Many people testify that a morning in the desert with him was an experience of a lifetime!” Zahavi also was an ardent naturalist and conservationist. He co-founded, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), which has served as a guardian of Israel’s natural treasures and biodiversity for almost 40 years. One of his most notable conservation achievements is that he, almost single-handedly, was responsible for saving the Hula Nature Reserve in northern Israel – an area of stunning wetlands and even more stunning bird life. Likewise, he was instrumental in founding the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) which protects natural habitats, biodiversity, and world heritage sites. Zahavi won a number of awards in recognition of his research and conservation efforts. These include the 1980 Israel Special Prize for contributions to the environment, society, and the State; the International Fyssen Prize for contributions to the evolution of social communication (2011); and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences (2016). The passing of Amotz Zahavi represents a great loss to our field. The ABS offers condolences to his family, colleagues, and friends.

 

 
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