Plant ecologist Margie Mayfield recounts her RMBL journey 

Like many undergraduates who spent time at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), my experience there was largely the result of chance, youthful ambition, and a sense of adventure.

I decided to become an ecologist after visiting Ecuador with my aunt at age 16. I grew up in Ames, Iowa — a college town — but didn’t love the big-university atmosphere, so I chose Reed College, a liberal arts school. I never regretted that decision, but the reality is that small colleges offer fewer options. I wanted to be a tropical ecologist, but that wasn’t a topic anyone studied at Reed, at least in the 1990s. Still, my ambition to become a tropical ecologist is what brought me to RMBL, and my time there helped me achieve that goal.

My supervisor at Reed was Keith Karoly, an alumnus of RMBL. While I’d envisioned myself in rainforest ecology, I never imagined becoming a pollination biologist. Keith convinced me that pollination was a great place to start, and he was right. I took his advice and applied to work with Nick Waser and Mary Price at RMBL.

I went to RMBL expecting hands-on experience in pollination ecology with the bonus of a beautiful environment, but my time there transformed my career and life in far more profound ways. Not only did I get to work with Nick and Mary, but by chance, I also met Stanford professors Gretchen Daily and Paul Ehrlich on a mountain hike. Not realizing who Paul was, I spent a lovely afternoon sitting and chatting with him on a mountainside while others in the group went up to the snowfields to slide down. (One thing I learned at RMBL is that I turn to lead above 10,000 feet; I love the mountains, but they do not love me!) This chance hike and unlikely conversation ultimately led me to a PhD program at Stanford, working with Paul and Gretchen, and right where I wanted to go: into the tropics.

RMBL is a truly special place and a maker of ecologists. Whether your passion is pollination, butterflies, climate change, or ecophysiology, RMBL is an increasingly rare place where ecologists from all career stages — undergraduates to senior professors — can work and live together in an immersive environment. I have worked at many wonderful field stations over the years, but RMBL is special, which I believe is why so many alumni return year after year.

In addition to learning how to be a field ecologist and meeting some of the greatest ecologists of the 1990s, I also made lifelong friends and colleagues at RMBL. One of my roommates left science soon after her time at RMBL, choosing law over ecology, but she remains one of my closest friends, even though we now live on opposite sides of the world. Despite never returning to RMBL — having been there for just one field season nearly 30 years ago — it’s remarkable how many of my professional connections in ecology trace back to that summer. RMBL has played a significant role in my success as an ecologist.

Unlike many ecologists whose first trip to RMBL led to a lifelong association with the field site, my path took me further afield. I moved to Australia to take up my first faculty position at the University of Queensland in 2007, and I am now a professor of ecology and head of the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne. However, I have continued to send my students to RMBL, as no place compares when it comes to learning, growth, and the enjoyment of ecology.

Though I went on to study tropical ecology for a while, my interest in pollination biology has persisted, and my interest in the ecology of beautiful wildflowers has only grown. While I no longer get to enjoy those incredible mountain vistas and hikes (which I miss dearly), I have found my wildflowers here in Australia. Though they are different in many ways, every field season I think about how it all began for me at RMBL.

— Margie Mayfield, PhD

Margie Mayfield is a professor of plant ecology at the University of Melbourne and head of the School of BioSciences. Her research now focuses on understanding how plant-plant and plant-insect interactions contribute to maintaining diversity at community scales. 

Top: RMBL alumna Margie Mayfield in 1997. Photo courtesy of Margie Mayfield