Before he passed away in 2015, Bill Stanley served as the collections manager at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
“Bill exuded energy, boundless curiosity, and deep joy of living,” the Field Museum wrote in a memorial post.
“He was a master storyteller, capable of engaging everyone in his love of collections. Bill started at the Museum in 1989 as collection manager of mammals and spent the next quarter century caring for that collection, building it into one of the best and most visited mammal collections in the world.”
Though he was based in Chicago, Stanley rarely stayed in one place for long. According to the museum, he devoted the majority of his career to field expeditions, which took him everywhere from “the mountains of Tanzania” to Uganda, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and beyond.
In late September 2015, while on one of his “field trips” to Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley, Stanley passed away at 58, reportedly of a heart attack.
But just nine days earlier, he caught something and held it in his hands: a tiny shrew, weighing in at just three grams.
A decade later, a team of researchers looked to fill in the evolutionary gaps of shrews.
Of the 106 specimens they studied, 52 were provided by museums from around the world: the Natural History Museum, London, the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, the World Museum, Liverpool, and the Institute of Vertebrate Biology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
But it was at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago that they struck gold.
By revisiting the last specimen Stanley had ever studied, they made a remarkable discovery: The dwarf shrew was a species previously unknown to science.
“The identification of species is pivotal in understanding biodiversity, particularly in regions with high levels of endemism and unique evolutionary histories,” lead author Evan Craig wrote on August 20, in a study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Biology.
“The Ethiopian Highlands, divided by the Great Rift Valley, is part of the Eastern Afromontane biodiversity hotspot, exemplified by the highest continental mammalian endemism.”
Despite their unassuming size, shrews possess a number of talents.
Although shrews have low vision, they have remarkable hearing. They even emit a low-amplitude, ultrasonic “twittering” that helps them navigate their surroundings as the sounds reverberate back.
And when some shrews — like the Northern water shrew — venture out onto the surface of ponds to look for bugs, the stiff hairs on their feet trap air bubbles, giving them the appearance of walking on water.
They’re also good for the environment.
As insectivores, shrews help keep bug populations from ballooning by keeping plant-destroying pests in check. They also aerate the soil as they dig and scurry, and help rainwater penetrate the earth through their burrowing.
The researchers topped off their study with a fitting tribute to Stanley — the man who made it all possible.
“The species name, stanleyi, is chosen in honour of William (Bill) T. Stanley…whose passion for African mammals was unparalleled,” Craig and his peers wrote in their conclusion. “His unexpected and untimely passing in the very mountains where this new species was discovered casts a solemn light on this designation.”
“The name Crocidura stanleyi not only commemorates his last fieldwork but also celebrates his enduring legacy and the indelible mark he left on mammalogy, conservation, and the many lives he touched with his mentorship and collaborative spirit.”
In his lifetime, Stanley lived to see two animals, a mouse (Lophuromys stanleyi) and a frog (Callulina stanleyi), named in his honor, with C. stanleyi marking a posthumous third.
In addition to applauding his extensive field research, the authors noted Stanley’s creation of the “Tanzania Mammal Key,” an English-Kiswahili identification tool that has catalogued many diverse mammals found throughout Tanzania — and continues to grow today.
“His foresight and enthusiasm for the biodiversity of the Ethiopian Highlands live on through this tiny shrew that thrives in the high, cold mountains: A fitting tribute to a man who held a deep respect for the intricacies of nature and the wonders it holds.”
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Header image via A. Davey (CC BY 2.0)
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