Forests with Bob

By John Hayes

Jenny Ramstetter, in teaching Forest Ecology in spring 2018, asked some of us if we had photos of Bob in various forests. Most of us, unfortunately, just had slides from bygone pre-digital days. But that got me thinking about forests and some other habitats I had visited with Bob.

For Bob, the more diversity the better. Perhaps many would recall Bob’s hand-typed desert plant lists. On most desert trips, we made it to the Mojave, but on some we didn’t. But you can bet we spent more time in the species-rich Sonoran than in the other deserts. Something about those summer monsoons and winter rains…. But Bob was also fascinated by oak diversity in Big Bend National Park, Texas, in the Chihuahuan Desert. Then, when he spent a sabbatical on the Mexican plateau, he worked with a guy who was a reputed expert on oaks. Ultimately, I don’t think he was impressed with the guy’s knowledge of the oaks. Bob said that because of hybridization the taxonomy was a mess.

I know that Bob was in awe of the irregularly flowering dipterocarp forest of the Borneo lowlands, as in the Danum Valley conservation area, with its 200 foot-tall trees. I have a slide somewhere of Bob and Kermit standing in front of one of those enormous buttressed trees.

He was also awestruck by the fauna diversity of the African savannah, as we saw in Namibia’s Etosha National Park (Jenny was there).

Of course, who wouldn’t be awed by the redwood forests, but on our few field trips in that area, Bob made sure we visited Los Padres National Forest above Santa Barbara to see its incredible plant diversity, especially the manzanitas.

And I know Bob and John MacArthur were intrigued by warbler diversity in the Appalachian forests. Was it really nearly 60 years ago that Robert and John MacArthur published that Ecology article on bird species and foliage-height diversity?

Is there anywhere that didn’t intrigue Bob? I think that you could have set him down anywhere on the planet, and he would have known where he was. How could one person know so much about so many plant and animal species?