Bryon: Where
are you from originally?
Macedonia: I come from a small town in central
Pennsylvania. I found the landscape and
town boring growing up, and had a desire to see and live in the western USA
where the landscapes are more dramatic.
So I did that – I’ve lived in Colorado, Arizona, and California, among
other places.
Byron: What
classes are you teaching in the spring?
Macedonia: In the Spring I teach Zoology, all the lecture
sections and three of the labs. I also teach a study abroad course in even
years on the behavioral ecology of Anolis
lizards. I only take 10 students, most of whom I invite because I’ve gotten to
know them in another course that I’ve taught. I do this together with a
colleague at a small college in central Michigan, so we have a total of 20
students. Some years we go to Bermuda,
like this coming May; other years we go to Jamaica. We’re branching out, however, and we plan to
do a trip to the Galapagos Islands in May 2014.
Lizards,of course.
Byron: I have
read that your interests include animal signals and coloration, what do you
think is the coolest example of this?
Macedonia: That’s an impossibly difficult question to
answer, really, because there are too many great examples. I would probably
say, an animal that can change their coloration between being inconspicuous and
highly conspicuous. Although Anolis lizards do this by extending
their colorful dewlap (throat fan), and true chameleons can change their body
coloration very rapidly due to innervation of the pigment cells, no animals are
as accomplished at changing color patterns as cephalopods – octopus and squid
family. The cuttlefish is perhaps the
most spectacular, blending in with the background one minute, sporting a
black-and-white striped pattern the next that looks exactly like a zebra, and
doing the “moving cloud”, flashing pattern of light across the body.
Byron: If you
could be any of the animals that you have researched and published papers on,
which would you be and why?
Macedonia: I suppose it would be a lemur, one of the
species call “sifakas” that are leaping specialists. I particularly like Coquerel’s sifaka. But I have much more in common with cats than
any animal I’ve studied. Like cats, I’m
aloof, am naturally nocturnal, I’m a carnivore, I can be gregarious but I tend
toward being solitary…. If I were a non-primate, I am best suited to be a cat.
Byron: Which
animal has the strangest mating behavior?
Macedonia: Hmmm… animals with sexual suicide, like some
spiders where the male becomes a meal for the female after mating, is pretty
out there. But it all makes sense in
terms of natural selection. When the
odds of getting a mate is low, and the extra nutrition provided by the male
body allow females to make and fertilize more eggs with that male’s sperm,
sexual suicide is in the male’s best interest: it increases his reproductive
success.
Byron: Do you
have any pets?
Macedonia: A cat, of course. I only have one at present, because he isn’t
big on sharing me with others. I’ve had
him for 13 years. I’ve had multiple cats
before, and I will again.
Byron: Could
you give us aspiring researchers some advice for the future?
Macedonia: Get experience as early in your academic career
as you can. For example, I was doing
independent study research projects as a freshman. All Biology majors are now required to take
two semesters of research, which gives you an edge at getting into professional
schools and graduate schools. But you
have to have the right temperament for serious research. Self motivation, goal orientation, being
content with delayed gratification… all of these are required to be a
researcher. Most of all, I think, you
have to have a passion for research. If
you don’t have a strong desire to discover the answer to a question, or at
least a passion for working with a particular type of organism, the delayed
gratification and frequent failures in research will probably be too frustrating
for you in the long run.
Byron: I’m told you are a big caffeine junkie.
What are your thoughts on the subject?
Macedonia: I no longer drink coffee as too much upsets my
stomach. So I drink a lot of Red Bull
and Water Joe to get through the day. I tend to burn the candle at both ends
during the regular semester… getting more than five hours of sleep on week
nights is rare. I’ve been a night owl since I was an adolescent. I have something termed DSPS, which is
Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. The condition has been linked to being homozygous
at certain loci in genes that control your circadian rhythm – your body
clock. Everyone has times of day when
they are mentally at peak performance, and other times when they are at a low
point. I’m the opposite of a morning
person because my body clock runs differently than it does for most
people. My father worked the graveyard
shift in a hospital for 23 years, so “nocturnality” runs in the family, so to
speak. I naturally begin to become very alert about 11 pm, and, if left to my
own devices, I’m at peak mental performance between 1 am and 4 am. This is true
if I sleep 8 hours, 4 hours, or 2 hours – I still wake up at that time of
night. It’s a bit of a crutch given that
most humans are diurnal.
Sea Education Association (SEA) is offering students around the world a chance to participate in their hands-on research program to broaden society’s understanding of the world’s oceans. It’s aptly named “SEA Semester” because participants spend several months involved in studying in the program while at sea. According to their website, SEA is the “only educational organization with custom-built sailing vessels” and SEA Semester has two ships that are each 134 feet long.
