Something Fishy

Mike Barton finds life’s answers in ichthyology and antique cars

Mike Barton is a biologist with widely ranging interests. From his Southern California youth comes a passion for classic cars (he has a ’55 Chevy Bel Air and an ’87 El Camino), as well as an interest in the 18th-century Catholic missions that dot the Californian coast. His interest in environmental issues has led to a popular freshman class on automobiles and their impact on the environment. He’s organized a small natural history museum in the basement of Young Hall. He even spent the fall in a beginning Chinese language class.

And then there are the fish: swimming brightly across the cover of his gorgeous new book, the third edition of Bond’s Biology of Fishes (Thompson Brooks/Cole, 2007); filling tanks in Young Hall; luring him to the Bahamas.

What is it about fish that’s led him to spend so much of his life studying them?

He offers a practical explanation in his book: “Fishes can provide crucial insights into the way the world works,” he writes.

But it’s also because fish are the creatures least like humans.

“What really attracts me to animals is the diversity of solutions to life’s existence,” he explains. “Fishes are appealing because they’re vertebrates, like us, but they live in an environment that is so different from ours. They represent sort of a culmination in the long history of evolution and adaptation to this very unusual environment.”

Barton is especially interested in fishes that live in extreme environments. As a Ph.D. student at Oregon State University, he studied fish in the intertidal zone of the northeast Pacific coast; more recently he has turned to the pupfish that inhabit inland ponds in the Bahamas.

At Oregon State he met his wife, Chris, a Centre biologist who collaborates on some of the pupfish research. As well, he met Carl Bond, his mentor and the original author of the fish textbook. Barton was acknowledged in the first edition and wrote a couple of chapters for the second edition.

When it came time for a third edition, Bond had long since retired, so the publishers asked Barton to take over the project, a complete rewrite that he started in 1999.

One aspect that makes his edition stand out is the artwork. Not only are the illustrations notable, but the cover artist he suggested, Ray Troll, is “famous in fishy circles,” for his attention to fish details, says Barton—along with his vivid 1960s poster artistry.

Now that the book is done, Barton, who joined the faculty in 1979, is looking forward to devoting more attention to his own research. The Bahamian pupfish present an unusual opportunity to study evolution, since they appear to be, he says, “at the early stages of—the term used is speciation—the evolution of a new species.”

Over the years he has taken 10 groups of students to the Bahamas during the short term, although he has now turned over the student trips to a biology colleague. “In order to learn science, you should really have the opportunity to do more science,” he says. “This is what it’s all about.”

Recently named Stodghill Professor of Biology, Barton realizes that few of his students will share his fish fascination. But he hopes they will at least gain a greater appreciation for the biological world “and all its beauty and subtlety,” he says.

On his computer screen is not, as one might expect, an image of a fish. Instead it’s the 1950s Hirohata Mercury, a custom car that Barton describes as “moving sculpture.”

“Most people are not aware of cars beyond them being appliances,” he says. “But I guess I gained an appreciation for the aesthetics. And when combined with high levels of engineering, you have something that is beautiful and functional.”

Which brings us to a car design based on a fish.

The boxfish does not look especially hydrodynamic. “But that fish is exquisitely designed to move itself, bulky shape that it is, with an absolute minimum of water resistance,” he says. Mercedes-Benz engineers “used features of the boxfish in designing the shape of the car, so it really cheats the wind.”

If it is ever put in production, you can bet that Barton will be the first on his block to own the boxfish Benz.

—D.F.J.

Centrepiece
Centre College
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Danville, KY 40422

Phone: (859) 238-5717
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