Biographical Memoirs Volume 56 (1987) / Chapter Skim
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Carl Leavitt Hubbs
Carl Leavitt Hubbs
Pages 214-249
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From page 215... ...
Leavitt Hubbs, was born on June 6, IS43, in Pamelia-Four-Corners, Jefferson County, New York, and moved with his father to Wisconsin. When he was fourteen, Charles began three years '"Biological Oceanography, Geochronology, and Archeology Along the Pacific Coast of Middle America and California," talk given at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, April 17, 1975.
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From page 216... ...
in the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan as probably the only extant specimen of that species from Kansas."3 In 1894, with his second wife and their son Leonard Goss Hubbs, Carl's father moved west to work placer claims in Arizona.
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From page 217... ...
, containing case after case of magnificent sea shells, by which I, in a bright blue uniform, kept explaining the exhibit to the assembled publicly Hubbs's parents were among a group that objected to a new ruling by the San Diego schools that children must be vaccinated against smallpox. Several families persuacled Katherine Tingley to open a private school (without required vaccination)
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From page 218... ...
. often wandering away from field work to see new kinds of animals and plants; caught bullfrogs in the new state of Oklahoma, watched tornados come frighteningly close, and successfully disarmed and duly punished a nasty Indian boy who rushed at me swinging a big knife.
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From page 219... ...
the collection after her death, ant! at late high-school age spent long hours in the Los Angeles Public Library reading books on conchology to produce an illustratecl phylogeny of molluscs happily lost."9 At Redonclo Beach, said Hubbs, his school training was good and intensive, leaving time for me to add to my shell collection; to fish off the old Redondo wharf when yellowtail were very plentiful and sardines seemed almost to fill the waters; to observe marine life in the tide pools at Rocky Point (I recall most vividly seeing the brilliant red and turquoise-blue young of the garibaldi)
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From page 220... ...
220 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Bliss Culver, a onetime field assistant to David Starr Jordan. Culver surreptitiously transferred Hubbs's interest from birds to fishes, encouraged him to collect the poorly known fishes of the streams of the Los Angeles plain, and persuaded him to attend Stanforc!
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From page 221... ...
a lifelong awe of the monumental man who long dominated American ichthyology, and in the late years of his own productive life sometimes voiced his regret that he would never be able to equal the written output of the prolific Jordan. Early in 1917 Hubbs accepted the position of assistant curator in charge of fishes, amphibians, and reptiles at the FielcI Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
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From page 222... ...
Clark, who served many years with the California State Fisheries Laboratory, proviclect him with many West Coast fishes. Robert Rush Miller has estimated that during Hubbs's tenure at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, the collection of fishes was increased from about five thousand to nearly two million specimens.~4 The emphasis was on freshwater fishes, especially those of North anct Central America.
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From page 223... ...
In the course of this work they cliscoverec! the matroclinous, gynogenetic reprocluction of the all-female fish species Poecilia (formerly MollienisiaJ Formosa, the "Amazon molly." In earlier researches they had also clevelope(1 through carefully annotated genetic crosses hybrid specimens of sunfishes (Centrarchiciae)
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From page 224... ...
with Robert Rush Miller. H-ubbs's interest in this subject never waned, and in 1974 with colleagues he published the monograph, "Hydrographic History and Relict i5"Investigations in Alaska in 1939 as Field Representative, Department of the Interior: An Historical Review of Natural Resource Problems In Alaska," talk given by Hubbs at University of Alaska, April 8, 1976.
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Sverdrup, Hubbs visited! Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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He continucct: We have had relatively little discussion regarding fields of research in which I might be engaged at Scripps. I would no doubt want to put considerable emphasis on systematic and variational studies of west coast marine fishes, particularly those in which speciation would be correlated with oceanographical conditions.
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From page 227... ...
~ no doubt will have new material published from time to time on the systematics and biology of the fishes but will definitely hope that you will maintain your plan to work toward a 'Fishes of California.' It will be a pleasure to make records and other information available for your project."22 Notice of Hubbs's appointment as professor at Scripps institution came on September I, 1944, with an announcement by University President Robert G Sprout that Hubbs "is an exceptionally prolific writer....
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From page 228... ...
He annotated extensions of ranges, observer] territorial defense in blennies in the aquarium tanks, began an analysis of the fish fauna of the kelp beds through specimens from the kelp harvesters and from lobster traps, anct noted ecological effects on speciation.
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From page 229... ...
to let a scientist from Scripps Institution accompany him on his yacht Zaca from San Diego to Acapulco, Mexico. Hubbs leaped at the chance.
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His concern over the extinction of some species of western freshwater fishes led Hubbs into major conservation efforts on their behalf. One of his earliest concerns was with the Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolic)
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Many years of (laity coastal temperature records were available from Scripps Institution and other California locations, so in ~ 948 Hubbs set out to extend the series southward into Baja California, Mexico. The roacis there were dusty or san(ly ruts, and in the rainy season mutiny morasses, but he acquired a four-wheel drive vehicle and, accompanied always by Laura and sometimes by students or hardy guests, he jolted down the peninsula.
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The trips in Baja California also disclosed considerable evidence of earlier human habitation there anc! ctrew Hubbs into collecting shell debris from aboriginal miciclens for its bearing on past climate.
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In 1973 Hubbs donated his large collection of archeological samples from Baja California and southern California to the Museum of Man in San Diego, where they have been cataloged and inclexecI for continuing use. Hubbs's interest in marine mammals began during his first winter at Scripps Institution in 1944: At that time, no one, either among biologists or the general public, gave any serious thought to the gray whale, and the general assumption was that the species, if not extinct, had at least very largely abandoned its runs along the California coast to and from its traditional breeding grounds in the lagoons of Baja California in Mexico....
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Fish & Wildlife Service. But in 1952 Hubbs took the opportunity to tally the gray whales in the calving lagoons by airplane, piloted by Scripps Institution physical oceanographer Gifford C
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Ewing urged Mexican officials to establish a sanctuary for gray whales in lagoons of Baja California. The plan was finally implementecl, with Hubbs's participation, in 1972.
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trips to Baja California islands. By 1948 he also was serving on the Research Committee of the Zoological Society of San Diego, which operates the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park.
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About five feet ten inches tall, and of stocky build, distinguished by straight, black, crew-cut hair that never grayed, he had a keen gaze with a slight twinkle in his eye. Even when engrossed in writing a manuscript or counting and measuring specimens, he accepted interruptions with good grace ancT turned to the new subject without pause.
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with him, absorbect his outbursts of impatience, and welcomed their guests. Together they raised three chilcTren: Frances, wife of Robert Rush Miller; Clark, professor of biology at the Univeristy of Texas at Austin; and Earl; high school teacher of biology in Orange County, California.
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From page 239... ...
All manuscript material and correspondence cited here are from: Carl Leavitt Hubbs, 1894-1979: Papers, 1915-1979, 81-8. In the Archives of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093.
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1, 1981~. A selected list through 1974 is in "Selected Bibliography of Carl Leavitt Hubbs from 1915 to 1974," by Elizabeth N
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From page 241... ...
Fish Game Fish Bull., 8:123.
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Publ., 16:1-86. 1927 Notes on the blennioid fishes of western North America.
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Descriptions of two new American species referable to the rockfish genus Sebastodes, with notes on related species.
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Biometric comparison of several samples, with particular reference to racial investigations.
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Mich., 65: 1-30. First records of two beaked whales, Mesoplodon bowdoini and Ziphius cavirostris, from the Pacific coast of the United States.
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The zoological evidence: Correlation between fish distribution and hydrographic history in the desert basins of western United States. In: The Great Basin, with Emphasis on Glacial and Postglacial Times, vol.
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1959 Initial discoveries of fish faunas on seamounts and offshore banks in the eastern Pacific.
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Oceanography and marine life along the Pacific coast of Middle America. In: Handbook of Middle American Indians, ed.
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Contribution to the systematics of the southern fur seals, with particular reference to the Juan Fernandez and Guadalupe species.
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