Archie Carr was born in Mobile, Alabama, on 16 June 1909, and grew up in Savannah, Georgia. His father and mother allowed their son to keep various wild pets, including sundry lizards, snakes, and turtles, thereby kindling in Archie a love of nature.
Archie entered Davidson College, North Carolina, as an English major, which may have been an early indication of his love of language, so evident in his later writings. However, before finishing his baccalaureate studies he switched to zoology and to Rollins College, Florida. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Florida, receiving his M.S. in 1934, and in his Ph.D. in 1937, the first Ph.D. in Zoology granted by the university. He immediately joined the zoology staff and, except for two short leaves of absence to teach in Honduras (1944-1949) and Costa Rica (1956-1957), taught ecology at the university until the mid-1980's.
Archie was warm and compassionate. He also was very human and could be delightfully mischievous. For example, when he was a graduate student, the campus night watchman once caught Archie and several other students plinking away with .22 pistols at targets they had set up on the groundfloor of the zoology building. On another occasion, Archie pickled some golden shiners in brine like Scandinavian herring and put them in a specimen jar, complete with museum label, in order later to eat them in front of a shocked friend and fellow graduate student. Archie's pranks frequently tested one's knowledge of wildlife, like the time he told a zoology secretary that a newly purchased matamata turtle had arrived in an advanced state of putrefaction as evidenced by its flattened head and the peeling patches of skin around its neck. Another time he placed a small plastic ball in with the zoology department's colony of African naked mole rats and then assured visitors that the "egg" was the first of many to come. On another occasion he swallowed what would have been the type specimen of a new small fish that the Florida State Museum curator of fishes had just seined out of Costa Rica's Tortuguero River.
Archie's sense of humor also extended to his writings. His 'The Fishes of Alachua County, Florida: A Subjective Key', is both a tongue-in-cheek spoof of taxonomic keys and a perfectly workable tool for identifying fish. First published as the 1941 issue of Dopeia, the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists' lampoon of its journal Copeia, the 'Carr Key' became a classic which has been reprinted and pirated a number of times since. A more intellectual but equally mischievous sense of humor often showed through his scientific writings as well, witness his description of the conservative morphology of turtles in Handbook of Turtles:
Archie published more than 120 scientific and popular articles, and 10 books, including Handbook of Turtles (1952), High Jungles and Low (1953), Guide to the Reptiles, Amphibians, and Fresh-Water Fishes of Florida (1955, coauthored with C.J. Goin), The Windward Road (1956), The Reptiles (1963), Ulendo (1964), The Land and Wildlife of Africa (1964), So Excellent a Fishe (1967), and The Everglades (1973).
Archie won many awards for his popular writings, including the Daniel Giraud Elliott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences for the Handbook of Turtles; the O. Henry Prize (Best Short Stories of 1956) for "The Black Beach", published in MADEMOISELLE magazine and later appearing as a chapter in The Windward Road, which itself won the 1957 John Burroughs Medal of the American Museum of Natural History for exemplary nature writing. Finally, the National Audubon Society presented him with its Hal Borland Award for a lifetime of excellence in nature writing. These awards did not adequately measure Archie's writing skills. He was an extraordinary writer--he was without question the best English-language nature writer since William Bartram. Bartram's 1791 publication, Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, contained such vivid descriptions of interesting wild organisms and such an unabashed sense of wonder at the beauty of wilderness that it entranced the noted authors of that day. Many of his expressive descriptions found their way into the writings of Coleridge, Wordworth, and others. Archie's word images of wild creatures and natural happenings entrance today's readers exactly the same way.
Archie marvelled at nature and savored differences in human cultures. Everywhere his travels took him, Archie collected not just nature lore, but also local customs and dialects. He drew anecdotes from this personal compendium to color his conversation, lectures, and writings. His descriptions conveyed both the wonder of the moment and the broader biological or cultural context of the event. He could transmit the passion, the excitement, and the reverence of life around us, on campus, in Micanopy, in Costa Rica, and in the world in general.
Archie lit many fires in the breasts of his readers, but no more than he did through his zoology lectures, which were sprinkled with spoken passages as moving as any in his writings. Students thronged to his classes. People loved Archie, not just acquaintances, but people who knew him only through his writings, or from tales they had heard from friends. So many people sought Archie out, like an omniscient naturalist guru, that it disrupted his work. Rather than turn people away, Archie would slip out of his office and work in seclusion at a desk in the stacks of the University's main library. Admirers mobbed Archie so consistently at annual meetings of scientific societies that he quit attending these gatherings. I remember one meeting of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at which Archie was the banquet speaker. The hosts began to worry when he was not seen during the first days of the meeting. Archie was there, staying out of sight, and as any one of us who knew him could have predicted, he appeared immediately before the banquet, electrified everyone with his presentation, and promptly disappeared afterwards. Archie's love of nature made him an ardent conservationist, long before it was fashionable in academic circles. When a particular patch of wilderness or population of wild creatures was lost, Archie felt it personally and he wanted other people to understand what such devastation means. His sense of loss at the disappearance of a species is clearly expressed in a passage he wrote in The Land and Wildlife of Africa concerning the dodo, that long-vanished Mauritius bird that now is the very symbol of extinction:
His devotion to natural history was not to be confused with a lack of scientific rigor in his thinking. That this was recognized by his scientific colleagues is manifest in the many prestigious awards and honors he received during his lifetime. Among the most recent of these were his being named Eminent Ecologist in 1987 by The Ecological Society of America, his appointment as Keynote Speaker for the 36th annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) in 1986, and the Honorary Doctor of Science Degree he received in 1985 from the Graduate School of Tulane University.
He is perhaps best known for his contributions to marine turtle biology and conservation. His interest in marine turtles was first piqued in the late 1940's when he was writing The Handbook of Turtles and he realized how little was known about them. His own research on marine turtles began in Central America. When he arrived in Costa Rica in 1948 virtually every female green turtle nesting on the Tortuguero beach was being slaughtered. Had that continued unchecked, the Tortuguero green turtle population might well be extinct today. Fortunately, Archie soon drew the attention of the Costa Rican government to the dangers of uncontrolled exploitation and initiated his research and tagging program at Tortuguero. The government responded by curtailing the killing on this the largest remaining Caribbean rookery beach. Much of Archie's research, especially at Tortuguero, was funded by the Caribbean Conservation Corporation末a public foundation formed when a group of concerned individuals became inspired by his book, The Windward Road. The data he gathered on the natural history, ecology and migrations of the marine turtles at Tortuguero, and of those in Florida, Ascension Island, and elsewhere in the world provide a sound scientific base for marine turtle conservation efforts everywhere. The establishment in 1975 of Tortuguero National Park is one of his most important achievements and helps insure the survival of the western Caribbean green turtle population as well as that of the magnificent terrestrial and riverine ecosystems found within the boundaries of the park.
During his last years Archie worked hard to solve the mysteries of the 'lost year' of sea turtles; that little known period in the life of a turtle between its hatching from the egg and its showing up dinner-plate size several years later on the near-shore feeding grounds. By piecing together fragmentary data on loggerhead turtles gathered from all over the Atlantic Ocean, and by examining what the physical oceanographers had written about currents, Archie was able to explain how down-welling and convergences concentrate nutrients and epipelagic flora and fauna, including hatchling turtles, along fronts, thus enabling the young turtles to survive for years in the open ocean. Not only did his findings signify a breakthrough in the study of sea turtle biology but in marine ecology as well. He also called attention to the danger posed by marine pollutants which are now known to concentrate in these same mid-oceanic fronts.
Although his interest in conservation became most evident in the late 1940's and 50's末about the same time that an awareness began to develop in the general public末he was sensitive to threats to the environment from long before that. Archie's relationship with his wife, Marjorie, herself an accomplished biologist and an active conservationist, enhanced his own effectiveness. Their personalities and interests complemented each other, and although for the most part they worked separately, there was constant exchange of ideas and support for each others efforts. Archie was the philosopher. In his writings he communicated not only the wonder that he experienced daily in the natural world around him but also a meaning that transcended the immediate experience. He argued effectively for preserving natural landscapes, but at times he became depressed that the battle to conserve wilderness was a hopeless one. It was then that pragmatic Marjorie, ever the optimist and instilled with more faith in the human race, would point out to him what practical action could be taken to deal with the problem at hand. He in turn, would encourage Marjorie to tackle what he considered to be the most critical issues. Marjorie works primarily with local enviromental problems in Florida and is well known as founder and president of the Florida Defenders of the Environment. Archie never liked confrontation and, insofar as he could, avoided hearings or meetings at which confrontations might occur. Although he argued very effectively in person, he preferred to present his arguments in writing. Much of his time was thus spent composing highly persuasive letters arguing for or against various courses of action that would have environmental consequences.
He eloquently and repeatedly made the case in his writings about the urgency for preservation of the natural world. He used aesthetic as well as economic arguments, but he was grieved to think that these arguments in themselves might not be persuasive enough to the general public. He worried that the adaptability of humankind would allow our species to blindly destroy what remains of our natural world and perhaps in the long run, to not even recognize what had been lost. Thus he was, during his last year, delighted to learn of the plans for the 25th Anniversary of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) at Assisi, Italy. Among the events was a conference at which representatives from each of the major religions would discuss the teachings of their respective faiths advocating a respect for nature. Although he was never a religious man, had he not fallen ill, he would have attended that event at Assisi. For in it he saw hope for mankind and for the world. Perhaps after all there was a spark of conscience universal to all races and creeds of mankind that deemed it unethical to destroy the environment.
During his lifetime, Archie Carr won many awards as a conservationist including the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal in 1973, the Edward W. Browning Award in 1975, the Order of the Golden Ark (Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands) in 1978, the New York Zoological Society Gold Medal in 1978, the Hal Borland Award of the National Audubon Society in 1984, and the Conservationist of the Year Award of the Florida Audubon Society in 1986. In 1984, he was elected a Member of Honor of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), whose Marine Turtle Specialist Group he chaired from 1966 to 1985. Archie served as Technical Director of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation since 1959 when it was founded for the purpose of sponsoring long-term studies of sea turtles. The activities of that organization continue under the direction of his son, David Carr. In 1986, the State of Florida established the Center for Sea Turtle Research at the University of Florida to ensure that Archie's work continues, and Dr. Karen Bjorndal, a former student of his, was appointed as its director.
Archie was well loved by those who knew him, and he had a large cadre of extremely loyal admirers who were impressed by his insight, humor, and exuberance for life. The Caribbean Conservation Corporation and the Center for Sea Turtle Research together will continue what he began, but on an even grander scale, his influence will long be felt and his work will carry on through the efforts of the thousands of people he inspired either personally or through his writings.
Archie published some 30 herpetological and five ichthyological contributions before focusing on marine turtles in the early 1950's. Much of this work forms the basis of our current understanding of the taxonomy of the testudinoid family Emydidae. The remainder of the herpetological works address problems dealing with the unique fauna of Florida. His ichthyological contributions include keys to the fishes of Florida (Carr 1936, Proc. Florida Acad. Sci. 1:72-86; Carr and Goin 1955, Guide Rept. Amph. Freshwater Fishes Florida. pp. ix + 341.) and the first comprehensive treatment of the fishes of any Pacific drainage of Honduras (Carr and Giovannoli 1950, Occ. Pap. Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan 523:1-38).
Archie's earliest work on turtle systematics began a long battle with what is still perhaps the thorniest problem in North American turtle systematics; the relationships of the concinna-floridana group of the genus Pseudemys. It was a problem to which he often returned, even into the sea turtle years (Carr and Crenshaw 1957, Bull. Florida State Mus. Biol. Sci. 2(3):25-42; Carr 1983, Animal Kingdom 86(2):46-47). He started by recognizing the close relationship of the species concinna and floridana (Carr 1935, Copeia (3):147-148). He later identified several new subspecies, suwanniensis (Carr 1937, Occ. Pap. Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan 348:1-7) and peninsularis (Carr 1938, Copeia (3):105-109), and recognized special relationships among others (mobiliensis to concinna, Carr 1937, Occ. Pap. Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan 348:1-7; heiroglyphica to concinna, Carr 1938, Copeia (3):105-109). His method was to inject biology into the typological treatment of turtle taxa left by his predecessors. He employed his revised series of named forms, and, considering sexual dimorphism and differential levels of reproductive isolation between taxa, proposed the possibility that a Rassenkreis existed for this group in the southeast. Although his taxonomic work for the complex does not survive totally, it did lead directly to the system of names we now use for the group. We still use all of the subspecific names he employed in his 1938 (Copeia (3):105-109) review. His conclusion that the seven "floridana subspecies" might represent "hierarchal assemblages" is now reflected in the allocation of one series of these taxa to the species concinna and the another to floridana.
The methods applied to the floridana-concinna problem proved successful in Archie's work with three other emydid taxa. Detailed examination of geographic variation provided the systematic arrangements we now use for the Pseudemys rubriventris group, Trachemys scripta, and Malaclemys terrapin. In 1938 (Occ. Pap. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 8:305-319), he recognized the species rubriventris, alabamensis and nelsoni as valid members of the rubriventris group. Studies published in 1937 (Herpetologica 1:75-77), 1938 (Herpetologica 1:131-135), and 1942 (Am. Mus. Novitates 1181:1-4), consolidated the names troosti, ornata, grayi, callirostris, cataspila, nebulosa, and hiltoni as subspecies of Trachemys scripta. His recognition of Malaclemys terrapin rhizophorarum (previously M. littoralis) as intermediate between M. t. macrospilota (previously M. pileata) and M. t. centrata allowed the treatment of Malaclemys terrapin as a single polytypic species (Carr 1946, Copeia (3):170-172).
Dr. Carr's work in turtle taxonomy also extended to West Indian emydids in the form of three papers with Thomas Barbour. In 1938 they described Pseudemys malonei from Great Inagua, in 1941 they published a monographic treatment of all West Indian terrapins, and in 1941 they described Pseudemys granti from Grand Cayman. Archie's description of the wonderfully dimorphic Graptemys from the Apalachicola drainage (Carr and Marchand 1942, Proc. New England Zool. Club 20:95-100) was tribute to Barbour, his mentor.
Later in this period of focus on the genus Pseudemys (including what we now call Trachemys), Archie's attention turned to marine turtles. His interest in the relationships of Lepidochelys kempi generated a discussion of the taxonomy of all of the living genera of sea turtles (1942, Proc. New England Zool. Club 21:1-16). This paper concludes with the taxonomy for sea turtles used by most authors today but the proposed set of relationships (Eretmochelys as the sister taxon to carettines rather than Chelonia) remains novel.
This first-hand knowledge of the most difficult of problems in North American turtle taxonomy, the genus Pseudemys (in the broad sense), and his mastery of the systematics of marine turtles, were undoubtedly the principle features which allowed him to produce his unrivaled 1952 Handbook of Turtles which represents the peak of his work of turtle taxonomy.
Although turtles were the major focus of his early work, from the beginning Archie revealed his interest in all aspects of the herpetofauna of Florida. He published a series of papers on Florida endemics including: Stilosoma (1934, Copeia (3):138), Haideotriton (1939, Occ. Pap. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 8:333-336), Elaphe obsoleta williamsi, (Carr and Barbour 1940, Occ. Pap. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 8:337-342) Nerodia fasciata taeniata (Carr and Goin 1942, Proc. New England Zool. Club 21:47-54) and Rhineura floridana (1949, Copeia (1):77). He documented such varied topics as the songs of Florida frogs (1934, Florida Naturalist 7(2):19-23; 1940, Copeia (1):55) and the habits of cottonmouths (1936, Proc. Florida Acad. Sci. 1:72-86; Carr and Carr 1942, Proc. New England Zool. Club 20:1-6). His PhD dissertation, published in 1940 under the modest title, A Contribution to the Herpetology of Florida, was the first such comprehensive treatment for the Southeast and still rates as one of the most community-oriented, statewide treatments available anywhere. This work and his 1955 Guide to Reptiles, Amphibians, and Fresh-Water Fishes of Florida (written with Coleman Goin) remain the foundation of current understanding of Florida herpetology. So, to those setting out to study Florida herpetology or the relationships of emydid turtles, my first advice would have to be: "Read the classics."
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