Ecology in Action

INTRODUCTION

When I first met Bernd Heinrich he was beaming. He had just received an email message from a friend of his in Poland that included a photograph of a wasp that had resided in his memory for a very long time. This wasp was particularly significant – it was a dark bluish-black ichneumonid wasp with yellow spots forming a bright contrast on its slender abdomen – and it was so shiny that it seemed to glow. The most significant feature of this wasp was the name of the collector – Bernd Heinrich – and the date was 1945. Heinrich's father, a specialist in ichneumonid wasps, had been seeking this particular wasp since about 1925. Young Bernd found this wasp on his way back from school by peeling away some moss from the shore of a nearby creek – the wasp was already deep into hibernation. “I was 5 years old at the time I collected that wasp,” Heinrich described, “and it looks exactly the way I remember it.”

In this chapter we will learn about Bernd Heinrich's approach to doing ecological research. You will discover how Heinrich was influenced profoundly by members of his own family, and by his childhood experiences as a naturalist. During our conversation, Heinrich raised several issues associated with the factors that led to his success. Perhaps the most important of these were:

• 1. He knew his study species very well, so he was able to identify aspects that were surprising and anomalous.

• 2. He devoted considerable energy into trying many different approaches, and experienced great success by taking his inquiries in many different directions at the same time (he calls this “messing around”).

• 3. He believed that chance or serendipity was an important player in his successful research program. (Note: I would argue that while serendipity was important, the key might be to be prepared to take advantage of it.)

• 4. He understood that successful research required a great deal of energy and motivation.

• 5. He worked on a variety of different animal species, carefully choosing animals that were suited to addressing specific questions.

These factors might seem basic, but they represent fundamental components of a directed approach to answering complex research questions.