John Alcock

John graciously allowed me to interview him for the Boyce Thompson Arboretum magazine. As part of the interview, I got to accompany him on one of his trips to Usery Mountain to watch him catch male tarantula wasps. It was an honor to see him in his favored surroundings.

My sympathies to Sue and close family members — I just learned today about your loss (April 11, 2023).

I'm envious of those who knew Dr. Alcock for so many years more than I had the pleasure of his acquaintance and friendship – but I'm thankful to have known him. Sonoran Desert Spring was among the first books I bought when we moved to Arizona in the late 90s, and there are chapters i have re-read over the decades since.
I'm also thankful for the years I worked at Boyce Thompson Arboretum, where my job gave me an excuse to meet and collaborate with so many biologists, naturalists and authors I held in esteem. Including John, who graciously accepted several invitations to host slideshow lectures and meet-the-author events at BTA.
As we grew better acquainted, he expressed interest in my home-brewed beers and wines — and we began trading — and my library boasts several signed editions of his books, bartered for my comparatively humble homebrews.
Among memories I'm happily summoning today?
One late spring day when I was invited to join John and two other guests of his, counting insects and surveying spring flowers at one of the many hilltops in the northeast Mesa area, which were featured chapters in Sonoran Desert Spring and Sonoran Desert Summer.
I last saw John during the first year of the covid pandemic, when he drove up to Globe for a morning of 'socially distant birding' outdoors — and my offer to sned him home with a few bottles of pomegranate-mulberry wine. Among our goals that day? To see the beautiful and snow-white leucistic Redtailed Hawk, which had taken up residence in this area — and she circled overhead just before he needed to depart and drive back to Tempe.

I'm thankful to have known him.

I send my condolences to the family of John Alcock. His passing revived many fond memories of our friendship, interactions and collaborations. John and I first met in 1974 at a conference of the Society for the Study of Evolution held in Tempe, AZ. At the end of my conference presentation (topic: female mate choice in an insect species) John introduced himself and offered some encouraging remarks about my research talk, which I needed as I was a grad student at my first scientific conference. We immediately saw our similar interests in and perspectives on evolution and behavior, which was a new and controversial field in biology at the time. John told me then of his book coming out soon and published in first edition one year later, Animal Behavior An Evolutionary Approach. This book was foundational in the rise of behavioral ecology and very highly cited in the scientific literature. To date it has been published in 11 editions! John and I kept in touch after 1974 and in 1980 began collaboration on a book, The Evolution of Insect Mating systems, published in 1983. John could write it beautifully the first time. The rest of us take several tries to get something scribbled out. Our book has been high cited and influential, including the basis of two scientific conferences, one in 1985 at Uppsala University (Sweden) and one in 2013 at St. Andrews University, Scotland. The latter was a conference entitled “30 Years of Thornhill and Alcock”. Many scholars in insect behavioral ecology gave research talks there. On visits to AZ to work with John on our book I had opportunity to see his field sites where he studied hilltopping mating systems of various insects. And opportunity to sit in on his lectures in his large undergraduate course on animal behavior at ASU. His students during lectures were passionately involved with learning the material. He reached them at a level that I had never seen before or since in any classroom. John’s impact on so many through his research, writing and teaching is eternal. This brilliant, gifted man will be remembered and missed by many.

Where to begin. I first met John in 1972 when I was a college sophomore at CSUF in Fullerton, CA and in the laboratory of botanist C. Eugene Jones, Jr. This was John's first year as a professor at ASU in Tempe, AZ. All of us were studying the nesting and mating biology of our favorite bee, the ground-nesting Centris pallida Fox, a pollinator of palo verde trees in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. Some of this early work was conducted near Earp, CA while most of it happened at a massive nesting and emergence site along the Salt River in the Blue Pt. Bridge area. I continued to study the biology of this wonderful native desert bee for many years and even now almost 43 years later. I was fortunate to publish quite a few papers with John on this and other species of Centris and Habropoda bees in Arizona. John and Sue welcomed me into their Tempe home when John and I would venture out to the Blue Pt. Bridge site. I loved that John ditched his grassy front yard and terraformed it into an island of native plants, much to the consternation of some neighbors. Some of my fondest memories are of John deftly sweeping up male bees in his aerial net. He would use a dial caliper to measure their head widths. John discovered that the larger males were often the most successful at securing a mate. Often, he would apply a dot of paint so that we could identify the same bees when they returned to patrol areas searching for mates. I remember his intense focus on the bees and ideas about sexual selection (his book with Randy Thornhill, his many papers and 10 editions of his classic Animal Behavior textbook). John, and his many papers and books, were and still are an inspiration to me. I considered John my mentor in the ways of bees. His passing has left a big void in my life, but every time I read one of his papers or popular books (e.g. Sonoran Desert Spring, The Kookaburra's Song etc.) a smile comes to my face and I treasure the memories of my dear lifelong friend, mentor and scientific colleague. I almost got my Ph.D. with John at ASU. I say almost because some pesky SAT scores got in the way. No way around those departmental rules and I went to UCD instead with Robbin Thorp. John was incredibly supportive throughout my career. My last field experience with John and Sue was in 2021 at a big nesting site of the rare Centris caesalpinae along Jomax Rd. in Scottsdale, AZ. I take great pleasure in co-dedicating my new book "What a Bee Knows" to John, that is being published by Island Press on March 7, 2023.