Resolution of Respect:James A. MacMahon (1939–2024)

Abstract

Professor James A. MacMahon passed away on May 6, 2024, in Logan, Utah, having played a leading role in the science of ecology and in the Ecological Society of America. Jim was ESA's president in 1997–1998, guiding the society through difficult financial times and expanding membership through young scientist recruitments. Jim received the ESA Distinguished Service Award* in 2005 and was an ESA Elected Fellow in 2012. Jim's scientific career spanned 71 years, of which the last 53 years were spent in the Department of Biology at Utah State University, Logan. Over these many years, Jim mentored 62 graduate students and published 135 papers and books. While always professing to be “just a simple country boy,” to everyone who knew him, Jim was clearly a “Renaissance Man” in all respects and an ecologist in every sense of the word. His enormous breadth of scientific interests and knowledge was illustrated in the wide range of his studies; Jim and his students published ecological papers on snakes, turtles, lizards, frogs, salamanders, birds, rodents, large mammals, spiders, ants, beetles, grasshoppers, flies, mycorrhizal fungi, and plant communities from forests to deserts. Jim's expertise lay in the areas of disturbance ecology, succession, and ecosystem restoration (specifically animal-related disturbances, volcanic eruptions, and surface mining activities), along with the conceptual organization of ecological communities. His research addressed concepts in community assembly, animal behavior, biogeography of plants and animals, herbivory, granivory and seedling recruitment, predator–prey interactions, decomposition and nutrient cycling, and systematics and evolution.

Jim was the lead Principal Investigator on several major research projects funded by the National Science Foundation. In the 1970s, Jim and his graduate students worked on a large study of succession in the spruce–fir forests of northern Utah, USA. This was followed by a 10-year series of multidisciplinary NSF grants focused on successional processes for ecosystem restoration in shrub–steppe habitat following surface mining disturbances in Wyoming, USA. At a time when studies of succession were largely observational, Jim was leading the designing of experiments focusing on driving mechanisms at a finer resolution than previously undertaken. Sometimes, these experiments were huge, as in the case of the restoration studies undertaken involving hundreds of plantings in computer-generated patterns. In other cases, the manipulation involved a single animal interacting with a single plant and watching how that interaction played out over decades. The eruption of the Mount St. Helens volcano in 1980 provided Jim and his colleagues and students with an outdoor laboratory to examine primary and secondary successional processes that has continued for over four decades with NSF and US Forest Service support recording the post-eruption community development of plants, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, and soil fungi and bacteria.

To say that Jim's life was busy and accomplished is an understatement. He was born on April 7, 1939, in Dayton, Ohio, USA, to a single mom struggling to make ends meet. Jim's father left the family home prior to Jim's birth and never returned. As an eight-year-old, Jim could be found in the Dayton Museum of Natural History tapping on the glass of the reptile cages. Thus, began an amazing career in community ecology. His first job was cleaning those reptile cages to contribute to the family income. His mother worked two jobs and was seldom home, leaving Jim to roam the areas around Dayton collecting snakes and discovering the great outdoors that would later become his passion.

Jim was an extremely bright student and succeeded academically, although with much mischief. His mother insisted that he attend Chammonade Julienne (on scholarship), a private Catholic High School. She had hoped he would become a priest, but Jim had other ideas. He became curator of reptiles at the Dayton Museum in 1953 and published his first scientific paper in Copeia in 1957 at age 18 before graduating from high school. During this time, Jim was part of a cadre of high school and college students who founded and developed The Ohio Herpetological Society which in 1967 morphed into the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR), publisher of the Journal of Herpetology. The society is now the largest professional society in the world devoted to the study of amphibians and reptiles. He attended several meetings in the 1950s and 60s, presented his first scientific paper at one of its meetings, and was present for the 10th anniversary meeting when the name was changed to SSAR. He was also editor of the society's journal in 1962–1963.

Upon graduating from high school, Jim was named a National Science Foundation Undergraduate Honors Fellow, granting him a scholarship to Michigan State University where he graduated cum laude in 1960 with a BS in Zoology; during his undergraduate years (1957–1960), he served as the Curator of Reptiles at the MSU Museum. He then received one of the first National Science Foundation postgraduate scholarships to attend the University of Notre Dame, working under Professor Robert E. Gordon and graduating with honors in 1964 after completing his dissertation on the salamanders of Appalachia. Jim embraced academia, returning to the University of Dayton where he was an associate professor for 8 years, teaching, writing, mentoring students, and conducting research.

Jim was a tenacious champion for social equality and equal justice. One story illustrates the lengths to which he would go to push for his principles. During the civil rights movement in the 1960s, while on faculty at the University of Dayton, he volunteered to be the faculty representative for the campus chapter of the Black Student Union. While in this role, he was approached by Dayton's Black community leaders for assistance with a major rat infestation in the less-affluent sections of town. The all-white city council had refused to pay for rat control measures, stating there was no evidence that Black neighborhoods had any more rats than white neighborhoods. Jim agreed to undertake a mark–recapture study of the rat populations in various parts of Dayton to demonstrate the inequities in rat distributions and abundances. After completing his field work (entirely alone, after dark, across the entire city), he presented the data to the city council, showing much higher rat densities in poor neighborhoods, and successfully lobbied the council to fund rat control measures in these neighborhoods.

Jim gave back to his community by sitting on local, national, and international boards; advising the Utah governor and numerous scientific groups including the United Nations Council on Global Climate Change; serving a term as President of the Ecological Society of America; contributing as the first Chairman of the Board for the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); and advising National governments and the U.S. Congress on matters of ecology.

After retirement, Jim developed an interest in the history and inner workings of steam trains. Once again they traveled, this time to find small, volunteer-run trains, riding through gorgeous country and enjoying every bit of the time spent together. Jim loved a good red wine, scotch, opera, chamber music, the symphony, great food (Jim was a gourmet cook), books (Jim maintained a huge personal library), art (his home was a virtual museum of Charley Harper prints), time with friends gathered around his dining room table, or a party on the deck. He was a wonderful storyteller and had many entertaining mishaps from his long career. He had a zest for life, but the best times were sitting on the deck during the northern Utah spring with Patty and his canine pals, Tavener and Berkeley, watching the birds and flowers emerge from the winter cold.