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Life in Extreme Environments: A Tribute to Melbourne R. Carriker, Gentleman Malacologist Introduction

As one makes one’s way through life, there are a few individuals who make a tremendous difference in shaping one’s career and indeed one’s life. Melbourne R. Carriker, with his intelligence, charisma, thoughtfulness, care and love was one of those individuals who had a profound influence on my own life and career, as well as the lives and careers of countless others both in and outside the field of science. As a young graduate student at the University of Maine, I gave my first professional talk at the annual meeting of the National Shellfisheries Association on work I was doing for my dissertation on the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis. At the following year’s annual NSA meeting, the revered Dr. Melbourne R. Carriker came up to me during the opening evening reception and inquired how my work with Mytilus was progressing. Needless to say, this then wide-eyed graduate student was in awe that someone of Mel’s stature would remember a student’s talk from a year earlier ... but that was a mark of the character of the gentleman scientist with whom I would have countless interactions over the years to come. During my postdoctoral days in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale, I had my first significant article in Science accepted (Lutz, R.A. & D.C. Rhoads. 1977. Anaerobiosis and a theory of growth line formation. Science 198:1222– 1227). One of the reviewers, Melbourne R. Carriker, signed his detailed review recommending publication of the paper, one that led to my subsequent 30 years of work on molluscs inhabiting deep-sea hydrothermal vents. As one of the coeditors of this special issue that focuses on shellfish at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and other extreme environments, there is no one, from my perspective, more appropriate to whom to dedicate this volume than Mel Carriker, with heartfelt thanks for all this remarkable scientist did for me and so many of his students and colleagues who have contributed articles to this issue. Melbourne R. Carriker sadly passed away on his 92nd birthday, February 25, 2007. Mel was a close friend and colleague of countless shellfish biologists who had the pleasure of interacting with him over the years. He was one of the true pioneers in the field of molluscan ecology and the loss of this truly remarkable gentleman malacologist was a crushing blow to those of us who knew the wonderful man behind the scientist. A former student once remarked that he had taken a course in Malacology at the University of Delaware that was ‘‘teamtaught’’ by R. Tucker Abbott, who taught the systematic side of malacology, andMel Carriker, who taught the ecological side ... he then paused and relayed with a broad grin. ... ‘‘It was like taking a course in the Bible and God taught the Old Testament and Jesus taught the New Testament.’’ Mel was very much the quiet ‘‘architect’’ behind creation of the Journal of Shellfish Research and how very fitting and proper it is to have this special issue dedicated to him published for distribution at the 100th Annual Meeting of the National Shellfisheries Association this coming April (2008).