In Memoriam: David F. Parmelee, 1924-1998

Abstract

winian view of natural selection on individuals. Thirty-five years later, and after much research, the idea of group selection is still rejected by most ecologists and evolutionists. However, the book stimulated an enormous amount of research, notably on aspects of bird behavior, forming what is perhaps Wynne-Edwards' greatest contribution to the development of ecological and behavior science. His contribution to the development and management of science was marked by numerous awards and accolades. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1950. He held a visiting professorship at Louisville in Kentucky in 1959, and visited New Zealand as a British Council Commonwealth Interchange Fellow in 1962. He was also a Leverhulme Fellow from 1978 to 1980 and was awarded honorary fellowships in the American Ornithologists' Union (1959), the Cooper Ornithological Society (1961), the Societas Scientiarum Fennica (1965), the British Ecological Society (1977), and the Institute of Biology (1980); Wynne-Edwards was President of the British Ornithologists' Union from 1965 to 1970. He was awarded honorary degrees from Stirling and Aberdeen Universities, the BOU Godman-Salvin Medal, the Neill Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1977 for his outstanding contribution to natural history in Scotland, and the Frink Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 1980. He was awarded a D.Sc. degree at Oxford and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1970, eight years after the publication of his magnum opus. Wynne is survived by his wife, son, daughter, seven grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren. All of his descendants live in Canada, and most have strong connections with Queen's University. As a result of these connections, and the value of Wynne's early work in the Canadian arctic and Gaspe regions, his surviving papers and books went to Kingston, Ontario. They include 80 years of daily diaries and correspondence notes and manuscripts for Animal Dispersion, all housed together as a Special Collection in the library system. The passing of Vero Wynne-Edwards has marked the end of an era in the development of ecological science. To those close to him, he will be remembered for his self confidence, erudition and scholarship, and for his authority, delivered with a firm but usually gentle touch; a somewhat unusual man, but one who had a great influence on the development of behavioral ecology.