Born in Alabama, and grew up in rolling hills and mixed forests of North Carolina. I enjoyed richness of natural history on field trips (UNC-CH); and during summer months as a seasonal ranger naturalist with the National Park Service in the Great Smoky Mountains (& subsequently the North Cascades, the Olympics and Wrangell-St. Elias.)

After UNC, I headed west to the Zoology Department at the University of Washington, and graduate study in forest entomology, investigating interdependence of fire, bark beetles and pathogenic fungi in stands of lodge pole pine. Brief wonderful autumn term at Oxford in 1980 exploring insect ecology and diversity. After UW, I started a PhD at UC-Santa Barbara studying plant-insect ecology; but interest in beetle chemical communication pulled me away to UC-Berkeley for my doctoral program investigating ecology & host selection of two species of bark beetles.

Two post-doctoral appointments took me to Logan, Utah with Utah State University & US Forest Service (’92-’95); and then to University of Wisconsin Madison (’95-’97) where I investigated insect chemical ecology.

My first faculty job was teaching entomology & forest ecology at University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand (1997-2000).

December 2000 returned to USA as Curator of Invertebrate collection (mostly insects) at Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. In 2002 I shifted from Curator to join the Zoology Department at OU as a professor, teaching entomology, ecology, senior capstone (human nature and human mind or chemical ecology) and non-majors introduction to biology.

I enjoy teaching natural history, animal behavior and field ecology. I taught insect ecology at the OU Biological Station (Lake Texoma) for several summers.

Retired 2019 and now enjoying learning more natural history everywhere I go.