Robert J. Baker

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Robert James Baker (born April 8, 1942 in Warren , Arkansas , † March 30, 2018 in Lubbock , Texas ) was an American mammal loge . His main research interests were bats and ecotoxicology .

Life

Baker was the son of James Simeon Baker and Laura Cooper. His father was killed in World War II and his mother remarried, which resulted in him growing up with six half-siblings. He spent much of his youth with his grandparents on a 100 acre farm on the West Gulf Coastal Plain in southeast Arkansas. Baker married Jean Joyner in August 1961. This marriage ended in divorce in 1975. In May 1978 he married Laura Kyle. He had a daughter from the first marriage and a son from the second who died in 2012 at the age of 25.

In 1959 Baker received a scholarship with which he began studying at Ouachita Baptist University . Soon after, he moved to the University of Arkansas at Monticello (formerly Arkansas A&M College), where he received his bachelor's degree in 1963 . He then went to Oklahoma State University , where he graduated with a Master of Science degree in 1965 and worked under the direction of Bryan P. Glass . In 1967 he was charged with a dissertation on the phylogeny of nectar-feeding bats from the family of leaf-nosed bat (Phyllostomatidae) based on karyotypes under the direction of E. Lendell Cockrum for Ph.D. PhD from the University of Arizona .

From 1972 until his retirement in 2015, he worked at the Natural Science Research Laboratory at the Museum of Texas Tech University . From 1976 he was a curator at the Natural Science Research Laboratory. In 1979 he was appointed professor in the Life Sciences Division at Texas Tech University .

Baker's bibliography includes 438 publications. The largest part dealt with mammals, including the first descriptions of 18 new species and subspecies as well as eleven higher-level taxa . Baker described among other species Eptesicus guadeloupensis , Chiroderma impro visa , rhogeessa genowaysi , rhogeessa hussoni , Carollia sowelli , Notiosorex cockrumi , Lophostoma aequatorialis , Oryzomys andersoni , Carollia benkeithi , Anoura cadenai , micronycteris giovanniae , Eumops wilsoni , Anoura carishina , rhogeessa bickhami and rhogeessa menchuae .

Baker made significant contributions in the field of biogeography . Over a period of several decades, Baker and his colleagues collected bats on various Caribbean islands, and in 1978, in collaboration with Hugh H. Genoways, he described the island biogeography of bats in the Caribbean basin. This was the first comprehensive presentation of the distribution of bats in a large archipelago in the Caribbean and formed the basis for numerous comparative analyzes of island biogeography.

From 1994 Baker worked on a long-term project at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant , which came to the conclusion that the radiation doses were insufficient to cause high mutation rates in the mammals native to the area.

For his field studies, Baker traveled to at least 26 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, including the United States, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Russia, Suriname, Trinidad, Tunisia, Ukraine and Venezuela.

Honors and Dedication Names

Baker was a member of the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM), from which he received the C. Hart Merriam Award in 1980, the Hartley HT Jackson Award in 1994, and the Joseph Grinnell Award in 2000. From 1994 to 1996 he was President of the ASM and in 2005 he was elected an honorary member. According to Baker, the mite are Parichoronyssus bakeri Bat species Sturnira bakeri , Uroderma bakeri and Tonatia bakeri Bat subspecies commissaris's long-tongued bat bakeri and the Baker-harvest mouse ( Reithrodontomys bakeri ) and the subspecies Geomys texensis bakeri the Llano gopher named. In 2019 the subspecies Thomomys bottae robertbakeri of the mountain pocket rat , Peromyscus bakeri from the genus of the whitefoot mice and the bat species Myotis bakeri from Peru were named after Baker.

literature

  • Curriculum Vitae (PDF, as of June 2014)
  • Lisa C. Bradley, John R. Suchecki, Brian R. Amman, Joel G. Brant, Hugh H. Genoways, L. Rex McAliley, Robert J. Baker, Francisca Mendez-Harclerode, and Robert D. Bradley: Mammalogy at Texas Tech University : A Historical Perspective. Occasional papers. Museum of Texas Tech University, No. 243, 2005, pp. 7-14
  • Hugh H. Genoways, Robert D. Bradley, Karen McBee, David J. Schmidly, Meredith Hamilton, Lisa C. Bradley, Peter A. Larsen, James J. Bull: Obituary: Robert James Baker (1942-2018). Journal of Mammalogy, 99 (4), July 2018, pp. 983-1012
  • Robert D. Bradley, Hugh H. Genoways, David J. Schmidly, Lisa C. Bradley (Eds.): From Field to Laboratory: A Memorial volume in Honor of Robert J. Baker , Special Publications, Museum of Texas Tech University, No. . 71, 2019

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Baker, Robert J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baker, Robert James (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mammal loge
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Warren , Arkansas
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 2018
Place of death Lubbock , Texas