J OURNAL OF C RUSTACEAN B IOLOGY, 35(1), 116-119, 2015 KLAUS ANGER, RECIPIENT OF THE CRUSTACEAN SOCIETY EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH AWARD Raymond Bauer 1 , Luis Gimenez 2 , and Volker Storch 3 1 Department of Biology, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA of Natural Sciences, School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, UK 3 Centre for Organismal Studies, Faculty of Biosciences, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany 2 College DOI: 10.1163/1937240X-00002289 Klaus Anger. N OMINATION Klaus Anger has had a long and distinguished career as a researcher in carcinology at the Biologische Anstalt © The Crustacean Society, 2015. Published by Brill NV, Leiden Helgoland, Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Germany, retiring recently as Emeritus Researcher, having achieved many important contributions DOI:10.1163/1937240X-00002289 KLAUS ANGER, RECIPIENT OF THE CRUSTACEAN SOCIETY EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH AWARD to our field. The research of Klaus, together with that of his students and collaborators, concentrated on larval biology, embryonic development, and adaptations of these life history stages to transitional environments (estuarine habitats, diadromous species). His research has resulted so far in some 190 publications in refereed journals (which Thomson’s Web of Knowledge reveals has attracted some 4690 citations). He also has written 13 book chapters, presented several plenary and keynote lectures, and contributed many papers at scientific meetings around the world. Most recently, Klaus published a major review (2013) “Neotropical Macrobrachium (Caridea: Palaemonidae): on the biology, origin, and radiation of freshwater-invading shrimp” in the Journal of Crustacean Biology. The crown jewel of Klaus’s achievements is his 2001 book “The Biology of Decapod Crustacean Larvae.” This tome of 420 pages is the “bible” of crustacean larval biology, a worthy successor to Gurney’s “Larvae of Decapod Crustacea” that was published in the 1930s and 1940s. Klaus’ book goes well beyond Gurney’s work, however, by delving deeply into the detailed morphology, ecology, and physiology of decapod larvae, and of course by synthesizing work on decapod larvae extending from Gurney’s time to the publication of Klaus’s book. The theme of his individual papers address many central questions of larval biology that were never formally researched, perhaps due to serious logistic limitations in physiological, biochemical, and larval rearing techniques in those times. During the 1980s and 1990s, a considerable part of Klaus’ work consisted establishing the patterns of larval growth and physiological adaptations and responses to food limitation and temperature in marine crustacean larvae. This work involved, with great effort, the fine-tuning of methods developed by other colleagues in addition to the development of new techniques. From the 1990s to the present day, and through international collaborations, Klaus has uncovered a diverse array of the life history adaptations of decapod crustaceans to estuarine, freshwater, semi-terrestrial, and polar habitats. Much of this work was summarized in his review paper in 2006. Klaus has mentored many graduate students (46 masters, 17 doctoral), all dedicated to some aspect of crustacean biology. Just by itself, this contribution to the future of carcinology is worthy of the significant recognition by the TCSERA. His work ethic along with his open, friendly, and sincere nature have motivated more than two generations of students, from across the world, to pursue a careers in crustacean biology. As Emeritus Researcher, Klaus remains as active as always, continuing to work with numerous collaborators – especially in recent years in Brazil and other South American countries. He serves the carcinological and aquatic biology communities as Editor-in-Chief of the new journal Sexual and Embryonic Development of Aquatic Organisms (SEDAO), Associate Editor of both Invertebrate Biology and Scientia Marina, and acts as a frequent reviewer for a wide variety of journals. 117 Dr. Klaus Anger, as a senior scientist who is an internationally recognized and outstanding carcinologist, is most very deserving of the TCSERA. [RB & LG] P RESENTATION Dr. Klaus Anger is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Research Award. Klaus Anger obviously deserves it! He conducted experiments with over 50 species of crustaceans belonging to 40 genera and published about 200 scientific papers. Among the species he studied, the record holders were a subarctic spider crab (Hyas araneus), a South American saltmarsh crab (Neohelice granulata), and a tropical river prawn (Macrobrachium amazonicum). What makes a scientist excellent? Klaus Anger’s personal development can help us to understand this. First, he was obviously equipped with excellent genes obtained from his parents, but good genes are not sufficient for lifelong success; the eternal nature-nurture controversy has not been settled yet. Klaus’ educational situation, however, was certainly favorable, too. For instance, he had the opportunity to engage in scuba diving when he was only twelve years old, discovering the amazing life in freshwater lakes and the sea. A few years later, he was lucky again, meeting an enthusiastic high-school teacher who opened his eyes to the microorganisms that could be found outside next to the classroom. Also, Klaus had the opportunity to study the classic languages Latin and ancient Greek for many years – in my eyes helpful for anybody who later has to learn technical terms and a nomenclature based mainly on these two languages. After his graduation from high school (1967), Klaus had to join the army. Military service had never been his dream, and being kept busy doing nothing of importance utterly bored him. This situation only stimulated his appetite for more interesting tasks such as learning, and in particular, deepening his knowledge of the natural sciences. In 1968, he entered the University of Giessen where he completed his undergraduate education with enthusiasm. From 19701975, he studied in Kiel, near the Baltic Sea, and thereafter concentrating on marine sciences. During this period, he was also trained as a research diver, so that he could spend many weeks in the underwater laboratory “Helgoland”, mostly in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, but also a few days off the Bahamas, in the US-run underwater habitat “Hydrolab”, studying the ecology of benthic marine animals. At the University of Kiel, Klaus met a senior professor of zoology, the late Wolfram Noodt, a crustacean taxonomist, who offered who offered to guide his Ph.D. studies. Klaus accepted and subsequently worked on the effects of sewage pollution on the benthic fauna in Kiel Bay, mostly analyzing formaldehyde-fixed samples – not really Klaus’ favorite kind of work. After the termination of his Ph.D. project in 1975, there appeared a job opportunity on the offshore island of Helgoland in the North Sea. It offered a chance for experimental work with live animals, at last! Helgoland actually comprises two neighboring islets, composed of sandstone and limestone, respectively, both with a rich marine life that has been studied by a time-honored marine research institution, the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland (BAH). So Klaus 118 JOURNAL OF CRUSTACEAN BIOLOGY, VOL. 35, NO. 1, 2015 went to Hamburg, where the director of the BAH, Professor Otto Kinne, had his office. After presenting a lecture on his Ph.D. work, he was placed on the shortlist, implying that he had to go also to Helgoland for another lecture and interview by the scientists of the marine station. The island is normally reached by boat, but on the very day of his second, decisive interview, Klaus missed it! Not thinking twice, he spent a lot of his sparse student’s stipend to hire a pilot, an ex-champion in stunt flying; Klaus arrived in a tiny plane even before the ship came into port, and his future colleagues admired him for this stunt. After a “trial-and-error phase” (as he calls it himself) in the 1970s – working with polychaetes and various other invertebrate groups – Klaus began to concentrate on studies of complex life cycles, larval development, dispersal, settlement, and bioenergetics of decapod crustaceans. In the 1980s, he mainly investigated larval physiology and chemical composition in relation to variations in temperature, salinity, and feeding. Beginning in the 1990s, he shifted increasingly towards larval adaptations to non-marine and cold-water environments. In his professional life, Klaus Anger co-operated – and published – with more than 120 scientists, visited and worked at many institutes in various countries in Europe, the United States, Brasil, Argentina, Chile and Argentina. He has been a door-opener for many young scientists – intelligent, inquisitive and innovative. Certainly Klaus Anger is a worthy recipient of this August award. [VS] ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The above comments were digested by the General Editor from the nomination and a seconding letter submitted for consideration by the TCSERA committee, and the presentation laudatum by Prof. dr. Volker Storch at the 8th International Crustacean Congress held in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, August 2014. R EFERENCES Anger, K. 2001. The biology of decapod crustacean larvae, pp. 1-405. In, R. Vonk (ed.), Crustacean Issues 14. A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam. . 2006. Contributions of larval biology to crustacean research: a review. Invertebrate Reproduction & Development 49: 175-205. . 2013. Neotropical Macrobrachium (Caridea: Palaemonidae): on the biology, origin, and radiation of freshwater-invading shrimp. Journal of Crustacean Biology 33: 151-183. C OMMENTS BY K LAUS A NGER ON ACCEPTING THE AWARD Honorable representatives of The Crustacean Society, dear friends and colleagues, I want to express my sincere thanks, immediately to Professor Volker Storch from the University of Heidelberg for his detailed, friendly and thoughtful laudation, next to those colleagues who had proposed me as a candidate for the 2014 TCSERA, to those who supported this proposal, and last but not least, to the members of the TCS board that took the final decision. The presentation of this award to me is a great and unexpected honor, for which I am deeply grateful! As it is difficult to assess one’s own achievements, I am myself not sure whether I truly deserve this honor but, if I do, then certainly not alone. In agreement with Professor Storch’s remarks on the significance of cooperation in both science and evolution, there have been numerous colleagues and students who collaborated with me, some occasionally, others over extended periods, some even through decades. They participated in the planning and execution of rearing experiments, took and processed samples, or were engaged in elemental or biochemical analyses, physiological, microscopical or ultrastructural studies, the evaluation of data, and the writing and publishing of papers. They all have contributed to our knowledge of life histories and, in particular, the larval biology of decapod crustaceans, mostly in ecological and evolutionary contexts. Also, cooperating with highly trained specialists from various disciplines, I have learned quite a lot about, and from, different ways of scientific thinking and the addressing of problems, using new techniques, and a broader range of literature. Hence, I have many reasons why I owe my thanks to all those colleagues and students who worked with me! Throughout my career, I had the unearned luck to belong to an older generation that did not have to worry too much about fund-raising, always writing reports for finished projects, and proposals for new ones. Another privilege was to belong to a governmental institute with a stable and mostly sufficient budget, and with bosses who allowed us full bent for finding our own lines of research, even if these were not directed toward applied, but rather basic science. Among those mentors and wise bosses, I would like to mention at least one: Professor Otto Kinne, long-time director of the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland (BAH), who later founded a private institution, InterResearch, where several high-ranking scientific journals are produced, and of which he still is the CEO. As a consequence of the favorable working conditions at the BAH, our projects could, but did not necessarily have to, follow the current mainstream or politically fashionable issues, which nowadays should better be included in proposals and papers, at least as attractive keywords meant to enhance the chances of funding or publication. Whenever the final results of our work turned out to be good, then this was largely due also to the enthusiasm, or one can say joy, that we felt doing our sometimes tedious research. It was this favorable environment that also allowed me to remain for almost four decades on the tiny island of Helgoland in the North Sea, 40 miles off the German coast. Nowadays, such working conditions might not exist any longer, not even on remote islets. If I can wish something to future generations of young scientists, then at least a partial return of the insight that working with enthusiasm and fun is a much better guarantee for success than pressure from policy makers and bosses worried about the profile and publicity of their ministries or institutes. Not all science can be based on short-term projects, there must be also long-term lines of research, not all progress can precisely be designed in detailed projects and time schedules, and success may not be defined as a congruence between a previous proposal and the subsequent report, but by originality and scientific quality of the output. I feel (or hope) that this 2014 award was also meant to honor a multi-disciplinary, rather unspecialized approach addressing far-scattered scientific questions. I am therefore KLAUS ANGER, RECIPIENT OF THE CRUSTACEAN SOCIETY EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH AWARD particularly thankful and proud that the laudation was presented here by Professor Storch, a renowned scientist who has worked in many fields, authored numerous textbooks, and is a university teacher who knows how to transfer his own enthusiasm to both students and laymen. He is also a good example for those colleagues who significantly contributed to our work, adding to it highly interesting and awarding new questions, views and techniques. As an expert in electron-microscopical studies already 30 years ago, he helped me to study the ontogeny of the hepatopancreas in larval crabs and lobsters, find ultrastructural and biochemical responses of this of key organ to changes in nutritional conditions, and understand critical points within the larval moult cycle such as the “point of no return”. In conclusion, all those colleagues who have cooperated with me, many of whom became good friends, should consider this honorable award also as their own! When I browsed through the list of participants of the ICC-8 meeting 119 here in Frankfurt, I found no less than 16 names of such friends and colleagues, and of course there are many more out there, who could not come. Also remarkably, three out of the nine symposia at this congress were organized by former students and close collaborators of mine – and all of these belong to a much younger generation than myself. This strong presence of young people, who had accompanied me for some time on my way, suggests that I somehow might have helped stimulate their appreciation of scientific work in general, or their particular interest in crustacean biology. This is something I am much more proud of than of any highly cited publication in an international journal, and it nourishes my hope that our loose, old-fashioned approach of studying life cycles and the ontogeny of specific biological traits might hopefully persist into the future of crustacean research. AVAILABLE ONLINE: 6 November 2014.
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