IN REMEMBRANCE:
Susan Adlai Foster (1953 – 2021), ABS Fellow and Past President
Written by Matthew A. Wund, with input from John Baker, Christine Boake, Zuleyma Martinez, and Dale Stevens
Dr. Susan Foster passed away at her home in Petersham, MA from complications associated with cancer on January 16, 2021. She was in the company of her loving husband, John Baker, and their two children, Patrick and Dylan. Susan devoted her career to the study of behavioral plasticity and evolution, and was a dedicated member of the Animal Behavior Society for more than 35 years.
Susan earned her B.S. in Botany and Zoology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and in 1984, earned her Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington under the mentorship of Robert T. Paine. Her graduate work investigated group foraging behavior in coral reef fish of Panama. She is most well-known for her extensive research on the plasticity and evolution of behavior in threespine stickleback fish. She began her stickleback research as a postdoctoral fellow working with Michael A. Bell at Stony Brook University. From 1990-1995, she continued this work as an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Arkansas. In 1995, she moved with her husband and collaborator, Dr. John Baker, to Clark University in Worcester, MA, where she spent the remainder of her career until her retirement in 2020. She continued mentoring her students and conducting research until her final days. Susan served Clark University with as much dedication and enthusiasm as she served the ABS, including in her position as the Warren Litsky Endowed Chair in Biology, and in her leadership on a variety of institution-wide committees and councils. She was also instrumental in establishing Clark University’s very successful Environmental Science Program, in which she served in several capacities.
Susan was exceptionally fond of the Animal Behavior Society, and served the Society in many capacities over nearly four decades of membership. The highlights of her service include multiple terms as Secretary (1993-1999), Second President Elect (08-09), First President Elect (09-10), President (10-11), and Past-President (11-12). More recently, she served as Executive Editor of Animal Behaviour, and served for more than a decade as the North American Editor of Ethology. Susan was elected an ABS Fellow in 2004.
Susan’s body of work is exceptional for its breadth and depth. In more than sixty peer reviewed articles and book chapters, as well as four edited volumes, her research beautifully married natural history, extensive field observations, exquisite laboratory experiments, and evolutionary theory. She did not view herself as either a field biologist, or as an animal behaviorist, or as an evolutionary biologist, but rather as all of these things simultaneously. She had a wonderful ability to comprehend the interplay among multiple scales of biological organization: appreciating how the nuances of individual behavior related to complex evolutionary processes. She was fascinated by threespine stickleback fish as an individual species, while simultaneously leveraging their value as a model system for studying general processes of behavioral evolution and adaptive diversification.
In addition to her brilliant mind, Susan was a loving wife and mother, an exceptional cook, an avid gardener, and had a wonderful, dry sense of humor. She also had a lifelong interest in the conservation of natural landscapes, and while at Clark University taught a course on the topic nearly every year. She was an unwavering advocate for the many students and postdocs she mentored throughout her career, many of whom came to know her as not only a mentor and friend, but as a member of their family. Susan was perhaps most in her element in her 250-year-old farmhouse in Petersham, MA, where, with her husband John, she would effortlessly move between writing research papers and grants, reviewing manuscripts for Animal Behaviour and Ethology, gardening, cooking, and entertaining guests. While home was her happiest place, Susan also enjoyed traveling, spending many field seasons studying stickleback fish behavior in Alaska and British Columbia, and traveling to conferences around the world. Her life was enriched by the many friendships she formed in her travels and through her research; indeed, news of her passing has resulted in an outpouring of love and respect from friends across the globe.
To commemorate Susan’s life and legacy, and the impact she had on her friends and colleagues, her dear friend and fellow ABS Fellow Dr. Christine Boake shared these sentiments:
“Susan and I first met due to our mutual interests in behavioral divergence between animal populations, which we recognized could lead to speciation. Her generous hospitality made it easy for us to become close friends. Our visits always combined our shared interests in science, cooking, and gardening. She had boundless energy; even after surgery imposed physical limitations, she kept up a strenuous pace both in research and at home. Her energy and enthusiasm allowed her to have her noteworthy professional success as well as having a multifaceted and rewarding life with family and friends. She had a full life.”
Susan’s professional and personal legacy includes the dozens of postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate student researchers she mentored, as well as the hundreds of undergraduates she taught in her Evolution and Animal Behavior courses. The students and postdocs whose lives she touched were helped to be better scientists, but more importantly were inspired to be better people. She will be dearly missed by the many students and colleagues who will remember her as not only an exceptional scientist, but more importantly as a true friend.
ABS extends condolences to her family and loved ones. Susan was a pillar and mainstay of the society and her presence will be dearly missed. Because Susan especially appreciated how much support the ABS provides to students, donations in her honor can be directed towards any ABS fund that supports our student members.