THE SOUTHEASTERN REGION: A BIODIVERSITY HAVEN FOR NATURALISTS AND ECOLOGISTS

Abstract

Many ecologists and biologists of my generation started out as naturalists. Many of us grew up in small towns, in the countryside or on farms, where nature was just outside the back door. My first graduate students at the University of Georgia more than 50 years ago, Robert Norris (winner ESA Mercer Award), David Johnston, and Edward Kuenzler, were talented self-educated naturalists. I learned as much from them as they did from me. One does not become a naturalist by taking a course; one needs to get into it at an early age. With more young people now growing up in the big cities, a regional natural history journal can play a major role in promoting the study and preservation of natural areas that are increasingly threatened by urban sprawl. The southeastern region, stretching from the mountains to sea, has a high diversity of habitats ranging from northern spruce forests to sub-tropical broad-leaf evergreen and palm vegetation. The region has more wetlands than any other region in the United States, including some of the biggest — the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia, the Everglades of Florida, the Louisiana Mississippi delta wetlands, the Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee, the Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina, and the Ace Basin in South Carolina. Southeastern coastal tidal salt and freshwater marshes and swamps are the most extensive and best-developed examples of this ecosystem type to be found anywhere in the world. Southeastern streams, rivers and impoundments are home to a high diversity of fish, herps, mollusks, and other aquatic life. Much of this diversity has yet to be described. The southeast has a long tradition for natural history going back to the early explorer-naturalist-writers: Mark Catesby, William and John Bartram, Alexander Wilson, John Abbott, and John James Audubon. John Muir, who before moving west, made a thousand mile walk in 1867 from Kentucky to central Florida in order to get acquainted with the plants, animals, and people of the region. Then there were the naturalists-educators. The LeConte brothers, for ex-