lesser-known protostome taxa: An introduction and a tribute to Robert P. Higgins, The

Integrative and Comparative Biology, Jun 2002 by Garey, James R

I was awarded a James B. Duke Fellowship at Duke University in the fall of 1958. I had planned on working on marine tardigrades and possibly tardigrade embryology, but along the way, thanks to an NSF Summer Fellowship at Friday Harbor Laboratories, I found kinorhynchs, thousands of kinorynchs, and decided that since even fewer people had studied them, they would be a good addition to my academic interests. And so I did.

And now to connect all of this to today's symposium. At Duke University, my doctoral advisor, C. G. Bookhout, thought that a 1-semester-hour seminar course in "lesser-known" invertebrates might be useful to the half-dozen students working with him at the time. It turned out to be every bit as interesting as he predicted. I was assigned the Kinorhyncha, Tardigrada and Priapulida as topics to present. And so I did.

Over the next fifteen years or so I remained focused on the above groups. Several interesting anecdotal stories connect me historically with the discoveries of Tubiluchus and Macabbeus in the 1960s, both aberrant priapulids. Both genera qualified for inclusion as meiofauna and their obvious relationship with the Kinorhyncha suggested that they would be interesting to add to my repetoire. And so I did.

In May of 1974, I saw the first species (an adult) of what was to become the phylum Loricifera about ten years later. The following year Reinhardt Kristensen also found a representative (a larva) and once we got our act in order, Dr. Kristensen published the discovery. During my doctoral thesis defense I had rather overconfidently talked about theoretical kinorhynch-related meiofaunal taxa, kinds of beasts we were likely to encounter someday if we looked carefully enough and/or in the right places. The loriciferan I saw in 1974, Pliciloricus enigmaticus, was the first of these wild predictions come true. About this same time, several colleagues and I decided it would be of great interest if we assembled experts in "lesser-known" invertebrates in order to present a "refresher course" on this subject at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Science and the American Microscopical Society (AMS) to be held in New Orleans in 1976. I was asked to put it all together. And so I did.

The primary purpose of the "refresher-course" was to fill in the gaps left by invertebrate textbooks or lectures on minor phyla and to present up-to-date information on these taxa as the basis for updating the teaching of invertebrate zoology. At the time, most courses covered about twelve phyla adequately and simply mentioned or ignored the remaining ones thereby giving the student the impression that these were either rare, difficult to find, difficult to work with, or that no experts were available as mentors.

The first presentation on the "lesser-known invertebrates" took place on 31 May 1976 in New Orleans. Speakers and subjects included William Hummon (Gastrotricha), Bradford Calloway (Priapulida), Curtis Swanson (Nematomorpha), Wolfgang Sterrer (Gnathostomulida), Al Grigarick (Tardigrada), Edward Cutler (Sipuncula), and me (Kinorhyncha). There may have been others, but I no longer have the information in my personal files, just some names and whatever in my little black book for that year. The morning session had several empty seats. But by afternoon, word had gotten around and the place was overflowing. I was told that I should repeat this type of presentation every so often. And so I did.