I am grateful for past influence and encouragement from my mentors and colleagues Gregory Foster, Dale Hinckley, Steven Proulx, Forbes Keaton, and Robert Klevan; Jay Schleusener, Robert J. Richards, Noel Swerdlow, Joseph Williams, Michael LaBarbera, and John Bolt; Andrew Zimmerman and Mathew V. Jones; Bruce Patterson, Larry Heaney, Julian Kerbis, and Bill Stanley; Karla Hahn, John Bertram, Mark Blumberg, and Pamela Austin; Richard Kiltie, Michael Miyamoto, Peter Feinsinger, Carmine Lanciani, David Evans, Brian McNab, Vasiliki Smocovitis, Jack Putz, Donald Dewsbury, and Robert Lacy; Michael Lacey, Cathy Langtimm, and Carlos Martinez del Rio; Philip Frank and Dustin Penn; Stanley Cohn, Elizabeth Leclair, Anthony Ippolito, and Rima Barkauskas.
In warm memory, I am also grateful to John Powers, Aron Moscona, Philip Hershkovitz, Howard Moltz, Frank Kinahan, John F. X. Eisenberg, Stephen Jay Gould, and David Hull.
It has been an honor to know and work with Philip Iannacone, Kristen Kenney, Jose Hernandez, Lisa Forman, William Tse, Ranna Rosenfeld, Marilyn Lamm, and Xiao-di Tan of the former Children’s Memorial Research Center, now the Stanley Mann Institute of Research.
I am grateful to the many students in non-majors biology courses at the University of Florida from 1989 through 1998, at Valdosta State University from 1998 through 1999, and at DePaul University from 2000 through 2014, and that biology capstone class from spring 2012, of course.
I thank the Robert Louis Stevenson graduating class of 1983 for a well-timed motivational moment during 2013, and also my friends Tod Olson, Julie Stauffer, Maura Byrne, Max and Alanna Lazarowich, Keenan Farrell, and Sam Shenassa. Closest of all, and with gratitude and love, I am grateful to my wife Cecilia Friberg for her support and kindness through the writing of this book.