Ring T. Cardé: It’s a Wonderful Life

Ring Cardé, Distinguished Professor and Alfred M. Boyce Endowed Chair in Entomology (2015). BORN 18 September 1943 Hartford, Connecticut CURRENT POSITION Distinguished Professor and Alfred M. Boyce Endowed Chair in Entomology, University of California, Riverside FIRST PUBLISHED IN SCIENCE Age 28 REFEREED PUBLICATIONS 255; 7 in Nature, PNAS, or Science EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Journal of Insect Behavior ASSOCIATE EDITOR Annual Review of Entomology (21 years) CO-EDITOR Encyclopedia of Insects FELLOW Entomological Society of Canada (1992) Royal Entomological Society (1992) American Association for the Advancement of Science (1997) Entomological Society of America (1998) California Academy of Sciences (2017) AWARDS International Society of Chemical Ecology Silver Medal (2009) International Congress of Entomology Certificate of Distinction for Outstanding Achievements (2016) Ring T. Cardé is internationally recognized for his research on odor-mediated behavior in insects, focusing on communication by pheromones in moths and host-finding by female mosquitoes. He has earned degrees from Tufts University (B.S., Biology, 1966), and Cornell University (M.S., 1968, and Ph.D., 1971), both in entomology. He was a postdoctoral associate with the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in the lab of Wendell Roelofs during 1971–1975. His first academic position was assistant professor of entomology at Michigan State University (1975). He quickly gained tenure and the rank of associate professor in three years, but in 1981, he accepted a position as associate professor and head of entomology at the University of Massachusetts. There he served as head of entomology for nine years (1981–1987, 1993–1995), and during that time he was appointed distinguished university professor (1989). The University of California, Riverside, offered Cardé the rank of distinguished professor and Boyce Endowed Chair in the department of entomology, so in 1996, he moved to the West Coast. Cardé chaired the department from 2003 to 2009. Cardé is co-editor of several books, including Chemical Ecology of Insects; Insect Pheromone Research: New Directions; Advances in the Chemical Ecology of Insects; and Pheromone Communication in Moths: Evolution, Behavior, and Application. The Encyclopedia of Insects, which he co-edited with Vincent Resh, was awarded in 2003 “Most Outstanding Single-Volume Reference in Science” by the Association of American Publishers, “Best of Reference” by both the New York Public Library and Library Journal, and, for the second edition in 2010, “Outstanding Book” by the Association of College and Research Libraries. He was elected to the Governing Board, Entomological Society of America (1988–1991), and President, International Society of Chemical Ecology (2012–2013). This interview occurred 29 April 2019 in Riverside, California. Cardé was 75 years old. What were your first insect experiences? I grew up in Farmington, Connecticut. It was nice for me, because it had a lot of rural characteristics that were in transition from dairy and farmland into woods that enabled me to explore the countryside. I guess I was free-ranging, as it is now called, where you could wander. Lots of biological diversity at that point. And very quickly, my interests began to focus on insects, and particularly moths and butterflies. My dad was a corporate executive, and my mom was very active in a variety of civic organizations, while she was a stay-at-home mom. What was the occasion, or who was the person … The catalyst? I got Holland’s moth book and Peterson’s field guide to butterflies. Those books were very helpful to me, but I was just driven entirely by my interest. I used a net that my mother made. But where I began to realize that there was a possibility of doing something other than as a hobby were two events. I was able to visit with Charles Remington, who was professor at Yale University and very much interested in butterfly evolution. Also, my mom brought me down to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, where people were working as entomologists. At that time, I decided I was going to become a professor and work on insects. When you met Remington, were you a young boy? Oh yes. I was probably 11 or 12. How did you make that connection? I went to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station first. And there was this old codger who ran the entomology department. He said I should go down and visit Remington because he’s really capable of talking about butterflies. Were you involved in any youth organizations that propelled this interest? None at all. When I got a chance to go to college, I went to Tufts University outside Boston. During the summer, I worked at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, making about $1.45 an hour. Had about a 45-minute drive. Gas was only 30 cents [a gallon]. There were four people that I interacted with, and I learned what they were doing: Chuck Doane, Dave Leonard, Jim Kring, and Ron Prokopy. Great guys. Mostly I was having fun with the gypsy moth and various studies that were underway. It gave me a lot of insight into what you would call the practical side of things. They taught me a lot about how to view science, how to do science, how to be skeptical about what’s published. We’re all skeptical scientists. We should be. Well, I think I’m more skeptical than most. Maybe to a fault. Isn’t that a strong character trait? Character flaw is a better way of thinking of it. You’re 75, which would mean you were of military draft age for the Vietnam War. How did you miss that opportunity? I started grad school in February 1966, which turned out to be the last window for not being eligible for the draft. Many of my friends in grad school at Cornell were shunted off to Vietnam midway through their graduate work. It was just fortuitous I didn’t get drafted. What was one of the most unusual things you did as a graduate student? It was an interesting time, as you note, back then. It was a pretty straightforward path, other than I probably should have worked harder and done more. I didn’t have any odd experiences or end up in odd places. And obviously things went on [laughs] that I’m not going to mention. That’s a curve-ball question, but I’m going to let it slide by. You smile. Well, I had a good time. Let’s put it that way. I look back and I could have done a lot more in grad school, research-wise, as opposed to social events. We had many places I would hang out at, and I didn’t sleep very much during my grad-school years. Why very little sleep? [John] “Jack” Franclemont was my advisor. He had a habit of being there early and ritually leaving at 11:00 in the evening, and he would always make a tour to see whether or not his students were still there. At 11:00 p.m.? At 11:00 p.m. On Sundays, it was only 9:00 [p.m.]. So you can imagine that at 11:05, we are all heading out. Did Professor Franclemont have the expectation for you to be there at 7:00 in the morning? Well, 8:00. He was always there to answer questions, except in the summer when [he was] off hunting moths in Texas or Arizona, but he was a really nice guy, really smart, [but] he was a hands-off mentor. I came in to work on systematics and some of the usual things you do with insects: dissecting them, putting genitalia on slides. Then I decided that was not satisfying enough, and I got interested in pheromones. At some point I hooked up with Wendell Roelofs, which is what enabled me to get a really nice addition to my thesis. Your first paper was published on tiger moths. Holomelina, which, of course, is now in a different genus. Virbia is the new genus. Yeah; taxonomists just can’t leave these things alone. Terrible. What was your interest in tiger moths? There is this group of very closely related, ill-defined species, as alluded to in Holland’s moth book. So, understanding perhaps how species evolve, which is what I was thinking of, even as an undergraduate. They were ones I could collect very close to my house, and so I had specimens going back to the 50s. I’m planning to do some field work in Acadia National Park in July with the same insect. I want to get that insect back in colony. I have unanswered questions I want to solve in the wind tunnel. What’s the one question you would really love to get answered before your research is done? It’s never done. But there will be an endpoint. Yeah, they’ll carry me out. There are two themes in our lab right now: how mosquitoes find and identify a host. It’s really a tremendously interesting question ’cause you have three lineages of mosquitoes that are anthropophilic. Although many odors are known to be emitted by humans, which ones are actually involved in host finding, landing, biting, remains a little bit unclear. There clearly are a number of odors, but we don’t fully understand which ones mediate these behaviors and at what distances. Do you think it’s much more complex than carbon dioxide? It is, and whether there is a signature odor for each of these anthropophilic species is really to be determined. I’d like to see some progress understanding these navigational issues: what odors are involved, where does it fit in with this upwind flight at a distance, and maybe the mosquito seeing the host ahead, making a decision to land, which involves having the optical field in front of you expand, which is a different thing than flying upwind. Folks have identified literally hundreds of odors coming off of humans, but we don’t truly understand how these mediate behavior. That’s one thing. What’s your second research area? As far as moths go, everyone has long assumed that the moths communicate over very long distances, but the evidence is pretty scanty. I think we understand a great deal about how this process occurs, but there are a number of outstanding questions. When any insect orienting along an odor plume arrives at the source of the odor, it characteristically changes its behavior. Often, it’s a prelude to landing. The inputs that dictate this behavior are not really well understood. One thing clearly has to happen, and that is the insect has to allow the frontal field ahead of it to expand to permit it to approach a landing spot. Also, we think there could be changes in the plume structure beyond just simply increases in concentration that inform the insect that it’s an appropriate stimulus to land on or nearby. Let’s go back to university days. You graduated with a Ph.D., and then moved into Wendell Roelofs’ lab. Well, Wendell and I had already done some work together, because of the pheromone of this little tiger moth. You were able to publish that research in Science with Roelofs. Yeah, lucky. I off-handedly asked Wendell, “I’m not having any good job prospects. Do you have any possibility of hiring me as a postdoc?” He had just come in to some cash from [the] Rockefeller Foundation, and he said, “Sure, why don’t you come on up.” Okay, done. I think Wendell was really foolish to take me, because I didn’t have the background that he needed. I wasn’t a behaviorist, and I certainly wasn’t a chemical ecologist. Maybe in retrospect he would say it was a good decision. That said, I don’t think too many people did have the right background. We were on the proverbial ground floor of the field [of pheromones]. What was the best thing to come out of your time with the Roelofs’ lab? I was there, and fortunately it was at a point where there were very few jobs—1971, ’70—and that was fine with me. There were so many exciting insects coming in, and we didn’t know what the pheromones would be. We’d develop bioassay methods, trying to find good ways to understand behavior as well as chemistry. It couldn’t have been a more fertile environment for intellectual development. By the time I got offered a position at Michigan State, I’d negotiated with Wendell to stay on for another eight months. I really didn’t want to leave—I was having too much fun. I thought you were going to tell me the best thing was Wendell inviting you to Amsterdam. You have obviously done your homework. Well, it gets on the personal side of things. It was ’72, and he was on sabbatical in Delft, The Netherlands. He said, “Why don’t you come over for a little bit of time, and then we’ll go visit Dietrich Schneider in Germany?” So, basically, Wendell introduced me to a technician—Anja. It was essentially a blind date, because I met her in the afternoon, and then four of us went out to Amsterdam that evening. I think we got back about 4:00 in the morning, and I was taken with this gal. I assume the four of you had a good evening together? Oh yeah! Well, the following morning, a colleague who was working with Wendell came by about 7:00 in the morning, because we’re going to drive to Munich, the start of Oktoberfest, not coincidentally. He looks at us and says, “Looks like you guys had a really late night.” Yeah, we hardly had any sleep, of course. So, Anja and I got in Your first was as assistant professor at Michigan Do you your It was was went a lot back then. You could get a new for Did you that I yeah! The you with of by and has been What of this paper it so I think it’s The about how you go about what are the and what you back are out pretty one the is because it some of the really great that have been [but] the about how you do and how it’s going to and why it not work really It is of to me that it is being at that You have more than and book do you have a One that was the most fun or the most or that answered the It’s like which of your do you like I don’t I look and I was doing it I’d do it I think the ones where we were able to look at the behavior of the insect in the and in the wind and out the navigational I think are the ones I’m the one published in in with a grad been a It’s where we see that a of odor can a in so the structure of odor is really just with the of the odor, but how it is in time and and the of moths. work in along pheromone was in the by my with and studies by my first So, many of my and have been into our to understand this in and now mosquitoes. You even had a paper published in Yeah, I don’t think I did a very good job that There is a that you were at the Academy of Sciences in and were by the How would as a department an assistant professor with to and of research that a that going to be We never take that has not had a good postdoctoral good with really good It’s so now that you don’t have that to be able to We take a person out of a but they have to be truly The research and interview to back up what is on We what they are going to be how are they going to be doing how are they going to approach their And thought about where going and how going to get there. lot of people we out of entomology but we want to with entomology as a insects just for the of insects, but into this which really entomology where people are doing very research and and then who have It all has to we have to the diversity of our What would you graduate focus on just your more than on your its your to the of what you are It’s by a on to the of trying to understand how that into the Well, it’s of along that It was the second time we had to to do field work and to understand the gypsy moth. It was to the same pheromone in and this of the gypsy moth is a very good and to We were to up with He had the and was at at the of the Academy of I came with a of a long into the there. Then we a flight on a I think we about in the a us up with a and I were in the back of the We up to the it’s about in the morning, and a we the people at the side of the in with right into the So we get out and they put us on the They take out our and they us into the was there, and this an and they had for his guys are at us in say tell you what’s going They put us up with our the And the is, I’m and this long of coming down into the And I’m This is it. I’m going back in a It it was a that had been by these same Were they As it was to me, they were who had been put out of There was now work for them, so they had turned to they had already been in this for about an trying to get out of various before they decided to And they our and it had all our in the all our the pheromones. was I had to get my in We still went on a field down the a way of into a and did our field work. I got some pheromone on and then had to a from to get it to It wasn’t what we were going to but it us to work with and we were still able to get a nice paper out of it. But the to was That was my last to for some or I been You and Vincent are of the Encyclopedia of Insects, now in the second edition and with What you to the first Well, me. I from the time we on the of the Annual Review of He got by and then he for a second basically, to out. I was by the and it turned out to be more work than of us it was of satisfying to go through the of the and to that be to and then out who could a on it. The thing is that there was a very number of It was about What and is that we would not be able to get everyone to on time. And having and books this is a But everyone their by the Do you a asked for it. This is the point at which so much is and most of it’s pretty it’s better than what we would have in the it’s not as But it was great fun to and was a great What do you think about at the end of the having two Do you think having two as I and but work is never really very far from my At odd you think about that should have been could have been should been an for Annual Review of Entomology for years. It’s really interesting to see where things are going and doing and, in a to out what’s what should we You really get to the of the Yeah, has been fun. I just started as co-editor of another I’m You’re now for Journal of Insect with I think last I It always me when I to about their you years old. What you to take on an at this in I’m not I can really it. it’s just interest in the including a way to understand what’s going It you to think more because at a of and that are different from your little I just had to deal with my it’s to and up with but you think more you from other and I insect for it’s good to of going I’m not going to long How would you like to be Your I don’t It is what it is, you will my in various I’m When I’m I’m course, some of the and you have your students and that carry on with how to a how to do science, how to your My is all these had has been my with that me with of this you for and for they did all the to and for they me what it And really how I I learned so much from my my They just me beyond Do you have a of your We all go back to little of things places You I really just my been to and a before It’s just fun to get with up with, and off I love to go to places where I with so I’m going to where be talking to people working on and And be at the in on insect and And that is another where I get a different of that work on odor and how at a and and how it’s with other I just love to go to these and with and see students and that I for years. it’s a to Wendell Roelofs and for into the and of Ring This interview was for and

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