ENHS Nature Trails Sept 99 Article 1

This month's speaker: An interview with Kip Keller

What is the geography of your childhood?
I grew up in western New York (Rochester) and spent my summers in the Finger Lakes (mostly sailing). First moved to the west coast (Seattle) to go to UW in 1973 for a summer field course in archaeology (near Ellensburg).

How did you get interested in natural history?
What else is there? Firstly probably through spending so much time outdoors as a kid - especially through many years in Boy Scouts (a very different troop than your stereotypical one - the kids ran the show and we did a lot of hiking, canoeing and the like). As a field of study, probably through the excellent ecologists at the U Washington. I worked for Davey Rhodes and Gordon Orians as an undergraduate in the early days of appreciating plant responses to herbivory (secondary compounds, etc...).

Did you have nature hobbies? ...were parents involved?
Not really any nature hobbies - but lots of outdoor activities, all, of course, fostered by my parents who also just like to be outside.

Are there teachers or other individuals who inspired you? Any inspirational travels?
Sure. Lots of teachers - probably most notably (as an adult) - Gordon Orians (ecologist at UW), Paul Illg (Invertebrate zoologist formerly at UW) and Walter Heiligenberg (Neuroethologist formerly at UCSD - SIO; a big regret is that I never got to go to the tropics with Walter. It would have been great fun!).
Travels: several times to South and Central American rivers and streams (Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Peru). Most recently (although not recently enough), with the Smithsonian's BIOLAT program to Pakitza Peru, where we surveyed streams for weakly electric fish. Great fun to be stuck in the rain forest for a month with fifteen other biologists (each with a different specialty, from mosquitoes to bats, hummingbirds, beetles, orchids...)!

Where did you get your education?
Council Rock Elementary
Twelve Corners Middle School
Brighton High School
University of Washington (BS - zoology)
University of Minneapolis (MS - ecology & behavioral biology)
University of California San Diego (Scripps Institution of Oceanography - PhD "A sensory motor interface for control of the jamming avoidance response in the weakly electric fish, Eigenmannia" with Dr. Walter Heiligenberg)

How did you come to Eugene, and what do you do here?
Postdoctoral research with Dr. Terry Takahashi. We study neural mechanisms of sound localization and attention in the barn owl. But mostly I have fun watching my kids do their things.

What are you going to talk about?
South American weakly electric fish - a little behavior, a little natural history and a little neuroscience. Maybe I'll bring one with me. I usually start with the question, "Have you ever heard a fish sing?" Typically I get a lot of blank stares, but last year in my daughter's AP biology class at South, one girl answered, "Yeah, you came to my fourth grade class and showed us." So, we'll hear about how these fish use their electric organ and electric sense to communicate with one another and to navigate in their often rather turbid (and dark!) native streams. And, maybe we'll get to hear a fish sing for us.

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