{"id":71719,"date":"2013-01-23T08:31:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T13:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=71719"},"modified":"2013-01-29T09:36:31","modified_gmt":"2013-01-29T14:36:31","slug":"uconn-biologist-honored-for-seminal-paper-on-social-behavior-of-frogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/01\/uconn-biologist-honored-for-seminal-paper-on-social-behavior-of-frogs\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Biologist Honored for Seminal Paper on Social Behavior of Frogs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kentwood<\/a>
Kentwood Wells, professor and head of the ecology and evolutionary biology department, is being honored for the impact of his work on the field of animal behavior. (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At age 14, Kentwood Wells of Springfield, Va. could rattle off the Latin names of all 100 toads and frogs found in the United States. He had a basement full of cages housing frogs, salamanders, and snakes he\u2019d collected in the woods and streams of his family\u2019s three-acre property. And when he left home to study zoology at Duke University, he left a large, colorful tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum<\/i>, to be precise) in his mother\u2019s care.<\/p>\n

Fifty years later, Wells, professor and head of UConn\u2019s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is being honored for his foundational contributions to the fields of animal behavior and ecology.<\/p>\n

His scientific paper, titled \u201cThe social behaviour of anuran amphibians<\/a>,\u201d published in 1977, is among the most-read and frequently-cited articles published in the 60-year history of the prestigious journal Animal Behaviour<\/i><\/a>. And this year, it\u2019s the first of 12 papers to be honored with an essay on its impact<\/a> by the Animal Behavior Society and the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour, which will commemorate one each month over the course of 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cWells\u2019s review has played a critical role in the inception of scores of research programs over the past 36 years,\u201d wrote journal editor Mark Bee of the University of Minnesota in his essay, which is titled, “All’s well that begins Wells: celebrating 60 years of Animal Behaviour and 36 years of anuran behavioural ecology.”<\/p>\n

The paper, which Wells wrote when he was in graduate school at Cornell, tackled big questions about frog behavior and how these amphibians interact with one another and their surroundings. It summarized what scientists knew \u2013 and what they didn\u2019t yet know \u2013 about how frogs choose mates, why they\u2019re aggressive toward each other, how they croak, and how they care for their young.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel privileged to have been in on the ground floor of the emerging field of behavioral ecology,\u201d says Wells. \u201cIt was an exciting time, and many new ideas were coming out in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ecology evolves<\/b><\/p>\n

Ecologists traditionally focused on particular groups of animals \u2013 for example, ornithologists studied birds, herpetologists studied amphibians and reptiles, and entomologists studied insects. But when Wells\u2019s paper came out, scientists were beginning to look more broadly at the way animals behave, asking scientific questions and testing them with experiments.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnimal behavior was shifting to a hypothesis-driven science,\u201d he says. \u201cThe paper was important because it could be applied to other taxonomic groups,\u201d or many other groups of animals.<\/p>\n

Susan Herrick, a Ph.D. student of Wells\u2019s, says the paper was written in a clear \u201cKentwood style\u201d \u2013 that is, comprehensive but clear enough to be understood by any reader.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe paper was written at a time when people were first developing solid ideas and core research questions about the social behavior of many animal groups,\u201d she says. \u201cAnyone who works, even peripherally, in the field of animal behavior would be familiar with this paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the direction of his Ph.D. adviser, Harvey Pough, and one of Cornell\u2019s renowned animal behaviorists, Stephen Emlen, Wells studied the mating behavior of green frogs in the Ithaca, N.Y. area. It was there that he wrote his influential paper.<\/p>\n

After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, Wells came to UConn as an assistant professor in 1977, the year his seminal paper was published.<\/p>\n

At UConn, Wells embarked on what would become the largest endeavor of his life: a comprehensive book about amphibian ecology.<\/p>\n

A life\u2019s work<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cOften people will cite my 1977 paper, but they won\u2019t cite my book,\u201d Wells comments.<\/p>\n

His book, published in 2007<\/a> and titled The Ecology and Behavior of Amphibians <\/i>(University of Chicago Press), took him 20 years to write, clocks in at 1,148 pages, and weighs more than six pounds. It\u2019s a far cry from the 28-page article that started it all, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I look at that giant book and wonder how in the world I had the energy to do it,\u201d he says. \u201cI am amazed that I wrote it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herrick says Wells\u2019s \u201cencyclopedic knowledge about all things herpetological is legendary and, at first, intimidating. In fact, I was terribly intimidated by him until I sat one-on-one with him to discuss my potential to complete my graduate work with him. It was then that I realized that he is amazingly humble and down-to-earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wells teaches classes in vertebrate social behavior and herpetology. He says both fields have changed a lot \u2013 especially herpetology, which he started teaching 35 years ago. The expansion of knowledge means, he says, that today\u2019s students have it much harder than he did.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents today have to be even more successful than I was,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you want to do research and be competitive at a place like UConn, you have to start really early. I tell students to read everything in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when teaching a class like herpetology, there\u2019s one thing that will never change, and that\u2019s Wells\u2019s favorite part of the class: the field trips.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nice thing about teaching herpetology is that in the spring you get to get out at night and go herping,\u201d he says. \u201cWe go out with headlamps and boots, and many of the students have never done anything like that, and they love it, looking around in ponds for frogs. Someone almost always ends up coming back soaking wet because they fell in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A frequently cited 1977 paper by Kentwood Wells is being honored by the Animal Behaviour Society with an essay on its impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":71385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[63],"class_list":["post-71719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 01:01:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71719"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71991,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71719\/revisions\/71991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/71385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71719"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=71719"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=71719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}