For love of nature: exploration and discovery at biological field stations. Bioscience

Contemporary natural history, imbued with renewed spirit and emergent on many fronts, is still essentially an outdoor science dependent on field exploration and discovery. An account is given of personal experiences in nature that led to re-search pursuits in the laboratory. The urge to explore, it is argued, like the ability to discover, can be developed. Biological field stations provide the ideal setting in which to teach students the art of discovery. Courses designed for that purpose could help train field researchers with a strong personal committment to the preser-vation of nature: Biologists so committed, by virture of their potential activism, are much needed. (Accepted for publication 9 Septemer 1981) "I do not know what I may appear to the world, bilt to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the seashore, and diverting myself, in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered be-fore me. " Sir Isaac Newton RECOLLECTION OF A DISCOVERY I do not remember the date, but I will never forget the occasion. It was early autumn in 1971, I believe, and I was spending a few days at one of my favor-ite hideouts, the Huyck Preserve near Albany, New York. I often go there after completion of my summer's experimen-tal program in search of peace and a chance to explore nature at leisure be-fore onset ofthe formal academic year at Cornell. The region is indescribably beautiful at that time, with the foliage in the midst of its spectral shift and the weather usually crisp and sunny. I was with Robert Silberglied of Harvard on that day, a close friend and fellow nature enthusiast, strolling about in the field with collecting gear and camera, observ-ing coionies of the wooly alder aphid, Pociphilus tesselatus. Our fascination was not so much the aphids themselves, but with the attendant ants that stood guard over the aphids, drinking their honeydew and providing them with pro-tection in return. We knew such "shep