ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WHEN I READ acknowledgments, I do so looking for secrets, a little bit about the book baker’s magic. The first thing I can tell you about this book, if you are looking for secrets, is that more so even than the other books I have written it has emerged around the dinner table. Many of the stories in this book are the product of conversations with my wife, Monica Sanchez, and our kids about the life around us. So too the setting for so much of what is in this book is inspired by our time in our own house but also in houses around the world, the places we have stayed, and the many archaeological sites we have visited. In the interest of understanding the history of houses, our kids hiked up to ancient house sites in a dozen countries. They went through museum after museum looking at re-creations of ancient houses. They ran, with us, through the fields of Croatian farmers, searching for hidden Roman villas that have not yet been studied. They were lowered feet first into muddy caves to search for silverfish. They sat through all-day-long bread-making experiments, surrounded by bakers singing songs about bread. And, of course, they helped try out new projects, projects on backyard ants, basement camel crickets, sourdough microbes, and much more.

That, then, is the first secret, that my family helped make this book. The second secret is that so too did tens, maybe hundreds, of people I work with in my “lab” and companion labs at other institutions. I should explain that when scientists use the word lab, they sometimes mean just that—a laboratory space with high benches and the people who, like yet other pieces of furniture, occupy the lab. This isn’t what ecologists tend to mean. Because much of what ecologists do is cheap and as likely to involve a bucket of mud as a fancy machine, to ecologists a lab is often a group of people who might share some physical space but who more often have fanned out across the world. My lab is a group of brains connected by a common set of quests. My lab is a group of people dedicated to beautiful new discoveries and to engaging the public in those discoveries. The work and thinking in my lab are connected to the work and thinking in other labs, be they in Colorado (Noah Fierer’s lab), Massachusetts (Ben Wolfe’s lab), San Francisco (Michelle Trautwein’s lab), or any of a half dozen other places. People from this web of brains have contributed to every chapter. You met some of these people in the pages of this book, but just as many didn’t appear. Many of those who are missing are missing in part because their participation is so central, so much a part of everything, that it is hard to describe just the role they play. This is a tricky element of science. We are asked all the time to say who did something, but we are terrible at really sorting it out.

Here are some examples of the people who helped make this book possible but who appear only fleetingly or not at all in these pages. Andrea Lucky and Jiri Hulcr came to my lab as a couple. They helped bring a new kind of community to my lab. Andrea launched our School of Ants project to engage the public in studying ants. Andrea and Jiri, along with an undergraduate student, Britne Hackett, launched our Belly Button Biodiversity project to sample belly buttons around the world to understand which skin microbes are common and which are rare (and why). During this same period, Meg Lowman joined the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences to lead the Nature Research Center. Meg had enthusiasm and cared deeply about engaging the public. She was key to the first steps we took in working with ants and belly buttons. The work with Meg and the museum was aided by Dan Solomon, then a dean in the College of Sciences, and Betsy Bennet, then the director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, who together built a political and financial infrastructure that made it easy to work with the public on a truly grand scale. Little of the work we did on ants or belly buttons is really in this book, and yet it was this work that set the stage for much of what we would do in houses. It set the stage for this book.

Andrea and Jiri then left together for the University of Florida. Before they did, I hired Holly Menninger to run our projects engaging the public and undergraduate students in doing science. Holly was the one who figured out how we could actually organize projects to really reach people around the world and involve them in the science we were doing. Holly was also a voice of reason when I’d come into the lab with yet another crazy project and no new funds, time, or people to do it. Without Holly, little of the work we did on the biology of houses would have happened. She is now the director of public engagement and science learning at the Bell Museum in Minnesota, for which the museum and the whole damned state of Minnesota are fortunate. She doesn’t occur much in the book because what she did was central to everything. Her work is always there—the social and intellectual infrastructure through which we figured out how to connect thousands of people in the process of doing science together.

With time, as Holly began to take on new roles (even before heading to Minnesota), including helping to orchestrate a cluster of Public Science at North Carolina State University (a group of new faculty all dedicated to engaging the public in science), Lauren Nichols and Lea Shell, along with Neil McCoy, took on more of the work of engaging the public in doing science. Lauren and Neil produced nearly all of the visuals in this book but also many of the other materials we use to talk about the life in homes. Lauren also helped to research this book, to follow loose threads as well as some threads that appeared well woven but that unraveled when she gave them a tug. Lauren read the book again and again and again. She formatted citations. She chased down leads. She helped rethink stubborn paragraphs and describe complex science. She responded to emails with titles like “Ahhh, copyedits are back and we have five days to go through the whole book. Can you drop what you are doing?” Thank you, Lauren. Lea Shell read the whole book and helped to make sure it included the things our participants most wanted to hear. Lea surveyed thousands of participants in our projects about the questions they wanted answered about the life in homes. Those answers are here, woven into this book. Hopefully, they are the questions you wanted answered, too.

In addition to my lab, the book depended on help from my collaborators, many of whom I now appear to owe favors. Noah Fierer you met in the book. Noah has been an outstanding collaborator, and I’m very grateful for the collaboration. He also read the whole book, thoughtfully, and then when I was worried about getting particular sections just right, he read them again. Carlos Goller has never formally been part of my lab but is often part of the most interesting science we do in the lab. Carlos has been an inspiration in terms of devising ways to engage students at the university in this work. Jonathan Eisen read the entire book and lent a critical eye to every bit and piece. Laura Martin helped me think about the history of human impacts on ecosystems. Catherine Cardelus, Katie Flynn, and Sean Menke offered thoughtful insights with regard to the ways the book might fit into university classrooms.

Many of the scientists featured in the book and those who work in fields related to the book helped with the book itself. They read chapters. They answered silly questions. Lesley Robertson welcomed me to Delft and spent two days talking and thinking about Leeuwenhoek and his work. Doug Andersen read the chapter on Leeuwenhoek and, like Lesley, helped me think through what he would have been like as a human. David Coil and Jenna Lang helped me understand the microbiology of the International Space Station. The chapter on showerheads was improved by comments from Matt Gerbert, a student in Noah’s lab. I’ve never met Matt, but he does cool science. Jenn Honda helped me consider the medical microbiology of mycobacteria. Alexander Herbig and Johannes Krausse provided insights about the ancient human history of Mycobacterium. Christopher Lowry schooled me on the benefits of Mycobacterium species. Christian Griebler wowed me with the grandeur of aquifers and read the chapter on showerheads. Fernando Rosario-Ortiz read the same chapter and helped me think about water treatment.

Illka Hanski never saw this book, but emails with Illka helped me think about his work. Illka also read a previous version of the chapter that discusses his work. I only ever met Illka in person once, and it was when I was a graduate student. My lab mate Sacha Spector and I couldn’t wait to talk to him about dung beetles and he didn’t disappoint. I never imagined we’d reconnect many years later to think and talk about the life in homes. Niklas Wahlberg, one of Illka’s former students, worked with me to get Illka’s story right. Tal Haahtela and Leena von Hertzen helped me to understand their work and also put it in the context of the story of Karelia. Megan Thoemmes, Hjalmar Küehl, Fiona Stewart, and Alex Piel helped me think about the ecology of wild chimpanzees as it relates to our own ancestral ecology. Erin McKenney provided critical insights about food and feces, as she often does.

Nearly everyone who worked with me on the camel cricket project appears in the camel cricket chapter. They all read the chapter. Thank you, MJ Epps, Stephanie Mathews, and Amy Grunden. Jennifer Wernegreen has helped me, again and again, think about the evolution of bacteria associated with insects, as has Julie Urban. Genevieve von Petzinger helped me revisit the story of Paleo peoples in caves, as did John Hawks. The chapter on fungi was improved (repeatedly) by Birgitte Andersen who humors my musings about space stations and does work that many others find too hard to do. Birgitte also inspired me to think carefully about the basic biology of the fungi in homes. She reminded me, too, that even Stachybotrys, beast that it is, has a kind of beauty. Martin Taubel helped me to think about the consequences of Stachybotrys in homes and what we do and don’t know. Rachel Adams challenged me to think about how much we really know about what is and isn’t alive and metabolizing in homes when it comes to fungi. It was Rachel who initially led me to consider the space stations.

The insect chapters were read and helped along by Matt Bertone, Eva Panagiatakopulu, Piotr Naskrecki, Allison Bain, Misha Leong, and Keith Bayless. Matt helped again and again. Thank you, Matt. Michelle Trautwein has been talking to me about this book for five years now, off and on, ever since we started working together in homes. Our work on the arthropods of homes, and conversations about arthropods and about life, all started when Michelle was still at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. It is my great good fortune that we have been able to continue them now that Michelle has moved to the California Academy of Sciences. Christine Hawn talked to me about the role of spiders in biological control. The cockroach chapter was improved by all of the entomologists in my ambit, among them Ed Vargo, Warren Booth, Coby Schal, Ayako Wada-Katsumata, and Jules Silverman, who dedicate all or parts of their research to figuring out how best to control the pests that even most entomologists don’t like. Eleanor Spicer Rice (one of Jules’s students) helped me think about how important the work on German cockroaches was to Jules Silverman. Thanks to the two department heads I had while writing this book (Derek Aday and Harry Daniels).

I started writing the chapter on Heinz Eichenwald more than five years ago. It wasn’t quite right though. It wasn’t until I joined a working group at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), led by Peter Jorgenson and Scott Carrol, that I really understood the extent to which Eichenwald’s experiments offered up a path that we as a society decided not to take. Thanks to SESYNC and a huge thanks to Scott and especially Peter but also to the entire working group, including Didier Wernli. Thanks, too, to Kriti Shaarma, who thinks like a bacterium. Finally, thanks to Paul Planet for his insights but also for connecting me to Henry Shinefield. Henry was willing to share his story and help get the chapter just right. Henry remains a visionary, a kind one at that.

Jaroslav Flegr, Annamaria Talas, Tom Gilbert, Roland Kays, David Storch, Meredith Spence, Michael Reiskind, Kirsten Jensen, Richard Clopton, and Joanne Webster all read and helped with the chapter on dogs and cats. Thanks, too, to Meredith Spence for spending all of those years cataloging the parasites and pathogens of dogs (and to Nyeema Harris for inspiring Meredith’s project). It has begun to pay off, Meredith! Nate Sanders, Neal Grantham, Brian Reich, Benoit Guenard, Mike Gavin, Jen Solomon, Joana Ricou, Annet Richer, and Anne Madden all helped with chapters of the book that were later deleted, chapters on forensics, wasps and yeasts, and the Pigeon Paradox. This book was once two hundred thousand words long, which is to say there is much more to the story of life in homes than I had space for here. Special thanks to the North Carolina State University Libraries and the wonderful people who work there. Karen Ciccone read the entire book and provided useful comments throughout. Mama Kwon, Joe Kwan, Josie Baker, Stefan Cappelle, Aspen Reese, Anne Madden, and Emily Meineke helped with the chapter on food. This book was winnowed, poked, and prodded by my agent, Victoria Pryor. Thank you, Tory. It was further subject to the supernatural selection of my editor, TJ Kelleher. TJ edited my first book, Every Living Thing. It is good to be, once again, working together. Huge thanks as well to Carrie Napolitano. TJ and Carrie, like many in the book world, always have too much to read and edit and too little time to do it, yet they managed to curate this work with great and perseverant care. The excellent copy editors Collin Tracy and Christina Palaia fixed broken sentences, mended problematic clauses, and more generally made sure each letter, comma, period, and colon was where it belonged. The book was supported with funds from the Sloan Foundation. Thank you, Sloan Foundation and, especially, Paula Olsiewski. The book was written while I was supported by an sDiv sabbatical fellowship and with help from and daily conversations with the scientists of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). Jon Chase, Nico Eisenhauer, Marten Winter, Stan Harpole, Tiffany Knight, Henrique Pereira, Aletta Bonn, Aurora Torres, and many others at iDiv helped me to revisit the biology of houses in light of the theory and insights of basic ecology.

Finally, I am immensely grateful to the many participants in our projects over the years. Many thousands of people have contributed to our projects studying homes. Those people opened their lives to our curious minds and joined us on a very strange quest. They asked questions that reframed our research. They inspired us and reminded us, again and again, of the joys of discovery and the even greater joys of discovery accompanied by multitudes. Thank you.

A microscopic image of dust. Dust is made up of many things, just as this book is a result of the influences of many, many people. (Image by Anne A. Madden, with assistance from the Nanomaterials Characterization Facility of the University of Colorado, Boulder.)