C. Richard Tracy - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

C. Richard Tracy, “Dick”, was born to C. Robert Tracy and Doris Edith Borel on May 24, 1943 in Glendale, California. Tracy is the oldest of two brothers and one sister. Tracy is a sixth-generation native Californian whose ancestors trace back to the last Saxon king of England, and who was named after his great grandfather J.R. “Dick” Tracy who was a famous shootist in Little York, California. He lived his first nine years of life in Hollywood, California, then moved to Topanga Canyon, California, a rural community in the Santa Monica Mountains north of Los Angeles with a population of 3,000 people in the 1950s. Hikes in that canyon were the first seeds to Tracy’s interest in nature and animals. At the age of 12, Tracy started training dogs as a hobby, which contributed to his passion for animals and helped him develop an interest in veterinary medicine. Tracy went on to work for a veterinarian for nine years, and started college when he was 16 as a pre-veterinarian undergraduate at LA Pierce College. In early 1964, Tracy interrupted his college education and began working as an x-ray technician trainee at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital while earning a living delivering the Los Angeles Times on a rural route of 60 miles, and simultaneously working for a veterinary clinic on the weekends. Long hours, constant work, and lack of sleep led to Tracy falling asleep while driving one early morning and he crashed his car. This horrible experience happened twice before he realize he was working more hours than reasonable, so he decided to quit the position at Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, and go back to college. Tracy was admitted to California State University Northridge where he worked toward his BA and MS in biological sciences. At CSUN, he started a graduate program studying molecular biology, but he yearned to reunite with his passion for whole vertebrate animals, so he decided to switch research emphases to ecology and studied the behavior of California toads for his thesis. Tracy went on to the University of Wisconsin to study mathematical modeling and biophysical ecology.

Education

• University of Wisconsin, Madison: 1968 - 1972

Ph.D., 1972 Major: Zoology; Minor: Botany.

• California State University, Northridge: 1964 - 1968

B.A., 1966, Biology

M.S., 1968, Biology

• Los Angeles Pierce College, California;

M.S., 1960 –1963, Zoology

Career

Tracy became a postdoc and instructor in the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and then took an academic position at Colorado State University in 1974. In 1995, he moved to the University of Nevada Reno to become director of the Biological Resources Research Center and professor of Biology. Tracy has taught at the University of Wisconsin, The University of Washington, The University of Michigan, Pepperdine University, The University of Puerto Rico, The University of Nebraska, Colorado State University, and The University of Nevada Reno where he currently holds positions in the department of Biology and the Program of Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology. He takes pride in his passion for teaching and mentoring students, ”my students are my family”, Tracy said during an interview, a love for science as a way of knowing, and the conservation of biological resources “I have a passion about preserving species”, Tracy confirmed on his love for conservation biology (esp., sensitive species).

Tracy worked at Colorado State University from 1974 - 1995. His research there included a wide variety of projects in physiological ecology. By the late 1980s, Tracy was encouraged to work on research with desert tortoise, and that led to him working on the recovery team for this species. This took him away from pure ecology, which scared him, but, as a matter of fact, work on desert tortoises still consumes him. His tortoise projects have been quite large; he had up to 140 people employed for him at a time and used $4.8 million yearly for research projects. In 1995, Tracy took a job with the Biological Resources Research Center (BRRC) at the University of Nevada, Reno. While working for the BRRC he has spent the majority of his time on sensitive species, including lizards, amphibians, and tortoises among several other vertebrates. Indeed, he has discovered three species of toads, including the Dixie Valley toad. Tracy’s move to UNR changed his area of focus from being solely pure biology and ecology to a substantial dose of conservation biology. Tracy is still at the University of Nevada and currently teaches ecology, directs graduate seminars in ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation biology and mentors graduate students in Ecology, Population Biology, and Conservation Biology.

Tracy’s educational lineage traces all the way back to the French naturalist and zoologist Georges Cuvier. Others in Dr. Tracy’s lineage are scientist including, L. Agassizi, D.S. Jordan, J. Grinnell, H. J. Oosting, H. Mooney, R. Cowles, K.S. Norris, J. Dole, W.P. Porter and many others who represent some of the most influential scholars in the history of natural history and ecology in the United States.

Post-graduate Mentorship in Research

Tracy has mentored more than 40 graduate students and 11 postdocs. Nineteen of these graduate students and postdocs have become professors who, themselves, mentor graduate students. In addition, Tracy served on over 90 additional graduate student graduate advisory committees including several from universities through out the world.

Positions Held

• Professor: Department of Biology, and Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology, University of Nevada, Reno. 1995
• Director: Biological Resources Research Center, University of Nevada, Reno. 1995 - 2006.
• Director: Doctoral program in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology, University of Nevada, Reno. July, 1997 - 2002.
• Professor: Department of Biology and Program in Ecological Studies, Colorado State University, 1974 - 1995.
• Guggenheim Fellow and Research Associate Professor: University of Washington, Seattle. September 1980 - June 1981.

Research

Tracy’s interests are focused in descriptive ecology, evolutionary biology, autecology, organismal biology, theoretical ecology, and conservation biology. He spends his time researching “proximate and ultimate interactions between organisms and their environments” (Tracy). He studies the ecological importance of autecology function of Grinnellian Niches, and the relationships of these niches which determine the distribution, dispersion, dispersal, and population fluctuations. This includes sharing, time and space, and interrelationships between animals. When studying conservation biology Tracy emphasize amphibians and reptiles, especially desert tortoises and western toads. Tracy spends the majority of his research on the biology, ecology and conservation of deserts and “paleobiology and extinction process”

Current research topics include disease ecology and ecoimmunology of Desert Tortoise, Conservation and ecological genetics of reptiles and amphibians, Physiological Ecology of vertebrates and Climate Change.

Honors

• Fellow – John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
• Fellow – American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Fellow – Association Western Universities
• Distinguished Scholar – Pepperdine University
• Honored Commencement Speaker – California State University, Northridge
• Service Award – American Society of Zoologists
• Service Award – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Top Director of Graduate Studies Award, UNR Graduate Students’ Association
• Vada Trimble Outstanding Mentor Award, UNR Graduate Students’ Association
• Best Graduate Mentor, University of Nevada, Reno, 2008
• Best Graduate Mentor, Nevada System of Higher Education, Nevada, 2008
• Lizard species was named after Tracy: Liolaemus dicktracyi

Publications

Some recent publications include:

Tracy, C.R. 1976. A model of the dynamic exchanges of water and energy between a terrestrial amphibian and its environment. Ecological Monographs 46(3): 293-326.

Tracy, C.R. and K.A. Christian. 1986. Ecological relations among space, time and thermal niche vectors. Ecology 67(3): 609-615.

Tracy C.R., K. E. Nussear, T. C. Esque, K. Dean-Bradley, C. R. Tracy, L. A. DeFalco, K. T. Castle, L. C. Zimmerman, R. E. Espinoza, and A. M. Barber. 2006. The importance of physiological ecology in conservation biology. Integrative and Comparative Biology. Integrative and Comparative Biology, pp. 1–15. doi:10.1093/icb/icl054.

Tracy, Christopher R., Keith A. Christian, and C. Richard Tracy. 2010. Not just small, wet, and cold: Interacting effects of body size, skin resistance, and microclimate on thermoregulation and arboreality in frogs. Ecology 91(5), 1477–1484

F.C. Sandmeier, C.R. Tracy, S. DuPré, H. Mohammadpour, and K. Hunter. 2011. Upper respiratory tract disease (URTD), mycoplasmosis, and antibody responses in the Mojave Desert tortoise, Mojave National Preserve Science Newsletter 2011(1): 8-13

Grants/Contracts, Publications, and Citations of Publications

• 88 extramural grants, career-long, totaling approximately $38,000,000
• 147 Peer-reviewed articles and chapters
• 37 book reviews, commentaries, popular articles, computer programs, TV programs, etc.
• Publications cited more than 2900 times producing an ISI h-index of 31.