DFC folks:
In yesterday's mail came the latest (January-February 2008) issue of
American Scientist. I glanced at the cover photo and saw a very
familiar desert spring, then quickly looked inside and found the
feature article: "The Phenotypic Plasticity of Death Valley's
Pupfish" written by Sean Lema, now an assistant professor at the
University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Sub-title: "Desert fish are
revealing how the environment alters development to modify body shape
and behavior." Some of you will recall Sean's presentations at DFC
while he was a grad student at UC Davis.
This is a question that has puzzled me ever since Jack Williams wrote
his paper 30 years ago on this subject about C. diabolis held at the
Hoover Dam refuge. Jack's paper is cited in Sean's bibliography. For
those of you within DFC whose interest in desert fishes transcends
the normal, make sure you get and read Sean's paper. American
Scientist is probably less available than many journals, outside of
university libraries. If you cannot find it, send me an inquiry and I
will see that you get a copy. Sean's email address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
should you wish to contact him directly. Assistant professors usually
are very busy people, so perhaps he could send me a pdf copy of his
paper and I could handle distribution to interested parties to enable
Sean to get on with his academic future without the encumbrance of
receiving a zillion email requests for his paper. He makes a very
kind mention of DFC in his Acknowledgements.
In a concluding section of the paper, entitled "Fighting for a
Future," Sean makes major reference to current recovery efforts at
Devil's Hole and poses questions about the future of desert fishes in
the face of continuing introductions of non-native fishes and ever-
present threats posed by water developers. He poses this question:
"In the meantime, research on pupfish is raising some important
questions about the goals of conservation. If the phenotypes of
animals can be intimately tied to their environments, what are we
trying to preserve--the unique genetic composition of the animal or
the unique animal in the context of its distinct environment? Is it
the same species if it is not preserved in the habitat that made it
unique?" Gary Garrett and I once spent much of our time driving from
San Antonio to Port Aransas discussing this very subject.
This fits well with an observation made by nature writer Annie
Dillard: "A habitat shapes species like a bowl shapes water." They
are impossible to separate.
Reference: Lema, Sean C. 2008. The phenotypic plasticity of Death
Valley's pupfish. American Scientist 96:28-36.
Phil
Edwin P. (Phil) Pister
Executive Secretary, Desert Fishes Council
P.O. Box 337, Bishop, CA 93515 (for regular mail)
For FedEx or UPS: 437 East South Street, Bishop, CA 93514
(760) 872-8751 [FAX and voice phone]
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the
ignorant." ...Amos Bronson Alcott
