Ecological Parasitology

Reflections on 50 Years of Research in Aquatic Ecosystems

Gerald W. Esch

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781118874677
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118874868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze biologiche
• Subtopic: Ecologia

Professor Gerald Esch has already published two books in what is becoming an informal series of essays exploring the way that discoveries about the biology of parasites have influenced ecological and evolutionary theories over a career that has spanned nearly 50 years. This book will be the third set of essays and will focus on key moments of discovery and explore how these achievements were due to collaboration, mentoring, and community building within the field of ecological parasitology. The book will not only describe case studies,  pure science and biology but also act as a career guide for early-career ecologists emphasizing the importance of collaboration in the advancement of science.

1
The Beginning

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

The Republic, Book I, Plato (427–347 BC)

I admit to being a Great Depression child, born in the mid-1930s, but I do not remember very much about those years. Based on what I was to learn later, however, I am glad I did not know about what was going on at the time. It was incredibly difficult for most folks, a real understatement when it comes to my own family. I then grew up during WWII and recall a great many things about those grim years. They were also very tough times but in very different ways from the Great Depression.

Baseball, school, and jobs occupied most days during my teen years. I frequently think about those times. However, my thoughts were always mixed in with what I really desired, but could not acquire, and that was a career in my beloved sport. I do not know how far I missed my dream of a lifetime in baseball, probably a lot more than I sometimes think. As a pitcher, I never did throw hard and was horribly wild on occasion, but I did have a pretty good “hook” (curve ball to the nonbaseball reader). With baseball realistically gone, I finished high school and headed for Colorado Springs and Colorado College (CC), where I was to begin my real lifetime. I did play 1 year of baseball at CC, but physically, I could not throw a ball after my freshman year because of arm trouble.

Several very important things were to happen during my 4 years there. The most important, by far, was meeting my beautiful wife, Ann, on a blind date. Even though we both grew up in Kansas about 20 miles apart (she in Newton and I in Wichita), we did not know each other until the middle of my third year, and her second, at CC. With her, I began my adult life and eventually my career as a parasitologist.

CC was, and still is, a liberal arts institution of about 1800–1900 students. When I began there, I was given a half-tuition scholarship. Tuition at that time was something like $350 per year—now, it is in the neighborhood of $40,000! As a freshman, I was enrolled in a general zoology course taught by Dr. Robert M. Stabler, or “Doc,” as he was known by all, students and faculty alike. I was a real rookie that first semester. In fact, at first, I could not figure out why there were so many doctors on the faculty. I honestly did not know there was such a thing as a PhD. No one in my family had gone to college, so there was no reason that I should have known there was more than one kind of doctor. In fact, neither my mother nor father had finished high school—as I alluded to earlier, the Great Depression days were tough for a lot of people!

I can still picture Doc Stabler really well. He was an East Coast native and had graduated from Swarthmore College and then studied at the University of Pennsylvania where Dr. David Wenrich, a renowned protozoologist of that era, first mentored him. After finishing at Penn, he worked with Dr. Robert Hegner at Johns Hopkins University where he received his ScD. He then taught at the University of Pennsylvania until 1947 when he moved to CC as chair of the zoology department. He changed a lot after coming West, especially his attire, which always included a good looking Western hat, cowboy boots, blue jeans with a Western belt and a large silver buckle, and a Western shirt with pearl buttons.

While lecturing that first semester, he would frequently jump up on a long dais in the large classroom on the top floor of a rather old building that served as an academic home for several departments. On the dais, Doc would “strut” back and forth as he harangued his classroom full of naive freshmen. He was quite a sight and an absolutely fantastic lecturer, which always reflected his dominating persona.

Over the front door of the old building, “Seek ye the truth, and the truth will set you free” was carved in red sandstone. The structure was named Palmer Hall, for General William Palmer, a Civil War veteran and Medal of Honor winner, who also laid out the street plans for Colorado Springs. I recall that Palmer had also started the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and, to my knowledge, one of the first to have a north–south route instead of east and west. It ran from Denver all the way down to the Gulf coast of Texas.

When Doc arrived in Colorado Springs, he purchased about 40 acres of land on the northern side of the city. He dubbed his property the “Venom Valley Ranch,” and, yes, he kept his home filled with rattlesnakes that he frequently brought to class so he could show off his prowess as a snake handler. It was rumored he had been bitten frequently enough that the next time would be his last, because of an alleged allergic response to the snake antivenom.

My goal when I first enrolled at CC was to become a physician, but after a year, I changed all that and switched to physical education thinking I would like to teach history and coach baseball in high school (my hopes regarding a baseball career had realistically dropped several notches by that time). One of the requirements by the physical education department was a course in mammalian anatomy. So, I registered for it and then fell in love with zoology again when I took the course from Dr. Mary Alice Hamilton, Doc Stabler’s sister-in-law. At this point, I had my first thoughts about graduate school, so I switched my major back to zoology.

Along about that time, I also recall asking Doc Stabler why he had chosen to become an academic and not pursued something else. His answer was succinct. He replied, “Three reasons,” and after a pause, came, “June, July, and August!” When I first thought about it, I believed he was being facetious, but he was not. It took me a while, but I finally figured out what he had said. There is not another profession (except the US Supreme Court and the US Congress during an election year) that allows one to have almost 3 months every year (not counting Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year vacations, plus a full week each spring) to do whatever you like, for example, read, do research, travel, write, or all the above or do nothing. Moreover, throughout each academic year, you are in contact with young inquisitive minds with new ideas and ways of thinking. And, you actually get paid for doing it!

When my senior year came around, I decided to take advantage of the liberal arts curriculum offered at CC. I had a very strong attraction to history and had identified a couple of courses that sounded fascinating. Stabler, as chair of the zoology department, had to approve registration for all majors. When I showed him the card with the courses I had chosen, he looked at it for the longest time and then lifted his head and asked, “Are you going to be a zoology major or a history major?” I immediately responded, “A zoology major, sir!” He stared back and responded, “OK, you are going to take my parasitology course.” I answered, timidly, “Yes sir,” and that was my introduction to what was to eventually become my profession. However, I should note that we compromised, because I did manage to take one of the courses, “A History of the Trans-Mississippi West.” It was all about cowboys and Indians, and I loved it!

At the time, I thought my future was in anatomy. As a senior at CC, I had even applied for, and received, a teaching assistantship in their Department of Anatomy at the University of Kansas, School of Medicine. Later that academic year, Ann and I drove to Lawrence, Kansas where I had an appointment with the chair of the anatomy department. He informed me that I had to come up to Lawrence over the next summer and take a course in gross anatomy so that I could be an assistant in the medical school’s gross anatomy course the next fall—I should have figured this would happen. After a long walk back to our parked car and a brief conversation, Ann and I decided that I should resign my anatomy assistantship. Gross anatomy during the hot summer in Kansas was not for me, especially at a time when air conditioning was not yet very common. The idea of spending my summer with a cadaver just was not very special.

In a quandary, the first person I went to on our return to CC was Doc Stabler. I explained to him that I wanted to switch areas and become a parasitologist. During his parasitology course, Doc was a “name dropper,” so he handed me a membership roster for the American Society of Parasitologists, at which time he was the treasurer. He instructed me to give him the names of five people by the next day and that he would have letters in the mail immediately. I can recall three of them, that is, one was Ray Cable at Purdue, another was a malariologist at UCLA, and the third was J. Teague Self at the University of Oklahoma. Doc told me later that he had written good supporting letters and ended them by saying, “First come, first served.” Later that week, he received a phone call from Dr. Self who offered me a teaching assistantship beginning the next fall in their Department of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma. I took it! It was the second correct step in my career—the first was obviously in agreeing to take Doc’s parasitology course.

By that time at CC, I had moved off campus and was living at home. My father had died a week shy of my 16th birthday. My younger brother, Gary, had graduated from high school and decided he wanted to come to CC too. So, our mother sold our house in Wichita and our hardware business she had been managing since our father passed and moved to Colorado Springs. She then decided, at the age of 50 and without a high school degree, she would go to nursing school and become a registered practical nurse—which she did, successfully. I even ended up tutoring her in anatomy and physiology. I also remember telling her that I was not going to medical school or to the University of Kansas in anatomy, but to the University of Oklahoma to get a PhD degree in parasitology. The hurt look on her face was an awful experience, but I immediately told her that one of the leading killers in the world was malaria and that it was caused by a parasite. Her look changed immediately and she was satisfied.

There are a couple of things that I still recall about Doc’s parasitology course. I remember the day he came “swaggering” into the lab carrying several long pieces of paper in his hand and smugly tossed them down on the table where several of us were working. He announced, “This is number 100.” Of course, none of us knew to what he was referring, but he then explained that on the table were the page proofs of his 100th publication. I have since learned the significance of his achievement and why he was so proud of it. I go to a baseball analogy by way of an explanation. It is like getting 3000 base hits during an entire career in the major leagues or winning 300 games as a pitcher!

Another time, he began mumbling about having to say “zooooo-ology” in a play that was being presented in a nearby community theater. As it turned out, the play was “Inherit the Wind,” dealing with the 1925 Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee. Doc had the part of William Jennings Bryan, one of the prosecutors of John Scopes who had been accused of teaching evolution, which was against the law in Tennessee at the time. Clarence Darrow was his legal opponent, and Doc, playing the part of Bryan, hated every bit of it. I did not see the play, but I was told (not by Doc) that he was a pretty fair thespian.

I also recall the time he lectured to us about taeniid cestodes and, in particular, a large bladder worm, which, at that time, was known as Multiceps serialis. (The bladder refers to the larval stage, which is in the form of a sac that contains a transudate, or fluid, and up to several hundred scolices, all attached to the inside of the bladder wall.) Doc said the larval stage, also called a coenurus, was common subcutaneously and intramuscularly in jackrabbits out on the Great Plains east of Colorado Springs, with coyotes as the definitive hosts. I was very curious about such an interesting creature, and in very short order, I got out my 16-gauge, bolt-action, Mossberg shotgun and headed east, out on to the shortgrass prairie. The first jackrabbit I shot was necropsied immediately, and lo, there were three bladder worms (coenuri) ranging in size from a large walnut to a small grapefruit (Figure 1.1). All were filled with the transudate fluid, and all had many scolices attached to the inside of their walls. Little did I know at the time, but this parasite was to become a focal point for my research over the next 7 years.

Figure 1.1 A coenurus of Taenia multiceps. The bladder was about twice the size of an ordinary golf ball. Note that the scolices are in several rows (hence the old name Multiceps [many heads] serialis [in a series of rows]). The coenurus was removed from a jackrabbit shot on the shortgrass prairie of eastern Colorado during my senior year at Colorado College.

I was the senior author (Esch et al., 1958) on my first paper, which was coauthor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• The Players
• 1 The Beginning
• 2 The End of the Beginning
• 3 Gull Lake and the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station
• 4 Gull Lake and the Connection with the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory
• 5 Development of Some Conceptual Notions
• 6 The Pond: Part I
• 7 The Pond: Part II
• 8 The Big Lake
• 9 The Strigeids
• 10 Some Small Streams and Small Ponds
• 11 Red Sore Disease
• 12 The End, Almost
• 13 The Catastrophic Collapse of the Larval Trematode Component Community in Charlie’s Pond (North Carolina)
• 14 An Epilogue: What’s Involved with Graduate School?
• End User License Agreement