Victor Ernest Shelford
Encyclopedia
Victor Ernest Shelford was an American zoologist and animal ecologist who helped to establish ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

 as a distinct field of study.

Background and education

Shelford was born in Chemung, New York
Chemung, New York
Chemung is a town in Chemung County, New York, USA. The population was 2,665 at the 2000 census. The town name is derived from the river flowing through it, which means in the native dialect, "Big Horn."...

, the eldest son of Alexander Hamilton Shelford and Sarah Ellen Rumsey Shelford. After ten years of schooling, he taught at public schools in Chemung County, New York
Chemung County, New York
Chemung County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the 'Elmira, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area' which encompasses all of Chemung County. As of the 2010 census, the population was 88,830. Its name is derived from the name of a Delaware Indian village . Its...

 in 1894. He attended Cortland Normal and Training School for two years and took a teaching certificate, and returned to teaching at public schools from 1897 to 1899. From 1899 to 1901 he attended West Virginia University
West Virginia University
West Virginia University is a public research university in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. Other campuses include: West Virginia University at Parkersburg in Parkersburg; West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Montgomery; Potomac State College of West Virginia University in Keyser;...

, where he was influenced by his uncle William E. Rumsey, the assistant state entomologist. In 1901, West Virginia University's president, Jerome H. Raymond, accepted a professorship at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, where he secured a scholarship for Shelford, who soon transferred. Here he took a position as associate and instructor in zoology from 1903 to 1914. Much of his early work was greatly influenced by Henry C. Cowles. Shelford wrote his doctoral thesis on "Tiger Beetles of Sand Dunes," which described the relation between beetle populations and vegetational succession, a topic of interest to Cowles. He completed his paper in 1907 and received a Ph.D. on June 11 of the same year. The next day he married Mary Mabel Brown, with whom he would have two children.

Early career

His thesis work led him to five further publications on "Ecological Succession," which were published in the Biological Bulletin in 1911 and 1912. By 1913 he published one of his great works on ecology, Animal Communities in Temperate America. He took a position for the University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

, where he would end up spending most of his career, in 1914 as an assistant and associate professor of zoology. From then he would help organize the Ecological Society of America
Ecological Society of America
The Ecological Society of America is a professional organization of ecological scientists. Based in the United States, ESA publishes a suite of publications, from peer-reviewed journals to newsletters, fact sheets and teaching resources. It holds an annual meeting at different locations in the...

 (ESA), and became its first president in 1916. He helped compile a Naturalist's Guide to the Americas, published in 1926, for the ESA. This helped him with his later work, The Ecology of North America (1963).

By 1927 Shelford was made a full professor in his position at the University of Illinois. He also was interested in experimental research in both the field and the laboratory. In 1929 he had published Laboratory and Field Ecology, which served as a method book for research in animal ecology. Shelford was known to travel into the field every summer to conduct research. He initiated the "century-cycle" project in 1933 at the University of Illinois' William Trelease Woods, which was used to study the relation between vertebrate and invertebrate populations with environmental factors. The first fifteen years of data collected from this project was published in 1951 in Ecological Monographs. Shelford was the biologist in charge for the Illinois Natural History Survey at their research laboratories from 1914 to 1929. He had also been director of marine ecology at the Puget Sound Biological Station during alternate summers from 1914 to 1930. Some of his work from this time was published in 1935 in Ecological Monographs.

Later life and work

Much of Shelford's work was terrestrial, but he also did much aquatic research. Some of his publication in Ecology
Ecology (journal)
Ecology is a scientific journal publishing research and synthesis papers in the field of ecology. It was founded in 1920, and is published by the Ecological Society of America.- External links :**...

were studies from locations such as stream communities (1929), bottom communities in western Lake Erie
Lake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...

 (1942), analysis of tundra
Tundra
In physical geography, tundra is a biome where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons. The term tundra comes through Russian тундра from the Kildin Sami word tūndâr "uplands," "treeless mountain tract." There are three types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine...

 communities (1935), and of Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

 floodplains (1954). He published a work in 1939 in Bio-Ecology in collaboration with Frederic E. Clements which attempted to integrate animal, plant, and aquatic ecologies as part of an ideal community. He left the University of Illinois in 1946, but the same year would found the Ecologist's Union, an organization which promoted the need to preserve entire ecological communities as part of nature conservation. The Union was founded in response to the ESA deciding it would be inappropriate for a scientific society to take a political stance. The Ecologist's Union is today known as The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy is a US charitable environmental organization that works to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive....

.

Shelford's work with Clements helped to begin to develop the idea of biome
Biome
Biomes are climatically and geographically defined as similar climatic conditions on the Earth, such as communities of plants, animals, and soil organisms, and are often referred to as ecosystems. Some parts of the earth have more or less the same kind of abiotic and biotic factors spread over a...

s by characterizing them through flora and fauna. His next work would take this further. Representing his last major work, The Ecology of North America (1963) brought Shelford throughout North America in his research. In 1968, he received the Eminent Ecologist Award
Eminent Ecologist Award
The Eminent Ecologist Award is prize awarded annually to a senior ecologist in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the science of ecology. The prize is awarded by the Ecological Society of America. According to the statutes, the recipient may be from any country in the world. However, in...

 of the Ecological Society of America
Ecological Society of America
The Ecological Society of America is a professional organization of ecological scientists. Based in the United States, ESA publishes a suite of publications, from peer-reviewed journals to newsletters, fact sheets and teaching resources. It holds an annual meeting at different locations in the...

 for his lifelong contributions to the field of ecology.

He also chaired numerous committees, including the Committee on the Preservation of Natural Conditions of the Ecological Society from 1917 to 1938, and the National Research Council Committee on Grasslands from 1932 to 1939. In addition, he founded the Grassland Research Foundation in 1939, which he presided over in 1958, and served as chairman of their scientific advisory board from 1959 to 1968. He died in Urbana, Illinois
Urbana, Illinois
Urbana is the county seat of Champaign County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 41,250. Urbana is the tenth-most populous city in Illinois outside of the Chicago metropolitan area....

.

External links

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