Influential ecologist Bob Paine dies at 83

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last updated 16 June 2016

Robert "Bob" Paine, the ecologist famous for identifying "keystone species," died Monday in Seattle of acute myeloid leukemia. He was 83.

In the 1960s, Paine conducted several experiments off the coast of Washington that introduced the concept of a keystone species, which maintains the diversity of its ecosystem. His experiments showed that if you remove the top predator from the shoreline, the common sea star, it changes everything, with the mussels that starfish once ate pushing out other species. He made this discovery during an era when conducting experiments in the field wasn't the norm. "He used to refer to it as 'Rambo ecology' because you had to do dramatic intervention to understand how the natural world works," Ruesnik said.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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