Terry L. Erwin was born in St. Helena of Napa County, California on December 1, 1940. His father was a “tin-knocker” i.e., a sheetmetal worker, and race car driver in the California circuit; his mother was a government clerk. Terry spent his youth trout fishing in the High Sierra with his maternal grandfather. As a teenager, with prodding from his father, he began building hot-rod cars and was a founding member and later the President of the California Conquistadores, a hot-rod club in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Terry Erwin

He put himself through college by working on Atomic Submarines at Mare Island Naval Shipyard where he was a helper in the “Asbestos” department. It was exactly at this time, when he made the life-changing decision that following his father’s footsteps was not in the cards for him. He then became a student under the guidance of the noted Coleopterist, J. Gordon Edwards, at San Jose State College. With the help of Gordon’s enthusiasm and guidance, Terry solved the intractable taxonomy of the Californian Bombardier Beetles – a group that still stays close to his heart. He then went on to explore the global bombardian beetle fauna for his dissertation under the mentorship of George E. Ball at the University of Alberta, Canada, finishing in 1969, who to this day is still his dear Mentor. And, continuing Ball’s tradition of mentoringship, he has now his own Mentees, all young women working on carabid beetle projects.

Having decided that he wanted to work under the three greatest (living) carabidologists, the first being Prof. Ball, Terry obtained postdoctoral fellowships at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard with Philip J. Darlington Jr. and at Lund University, Sweden with Carl H. Lindroth. However, a position opened at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (then the USNM or United States National Museum) in the Department of Entomology upon the retirement of Oscar Cartwright. With the support of Washington Biologists Field Club (WBFC) members Paul Spangler (Coleopterist) and Karl Krombien (Chairman of Entomology), Terry was able to accept the position and within two months took a year-long sabbatical to Sweden to study with Lindroth.

He returned in 1971, to take up the reins as the second Coleopterist within the Department (now he is the only Coleopterist with the Smithsonian Institution in charge of 12 million museum specimens). While in Sweden, the Chairmanship of the Department turned over from Karl Krombien to Paul D. Hurd, who upon arrival saw on his new desk a proposal previously left by Terry asking to obtain funding for studies of the California carabid beetles. Having learned of monies for studies in Central America, Hurd crossed out “California” and wrote “Panama.” To Terry’s great surprise, he arrived home from Sweden only to find out he was checked in on the next plane to the Canal Zone. That journey made the beginning of a lifetime career devoted to the studies of biodiversity in Neotropical forests.

In 1982, with the publication of a small paper (Erwin TL (1982) Tropical forests: Their richness in Coleoptera and other arthropod species. The Coleopterists Bulletin 36 (1): 74–75) on the beetle fauna of a Panamanian tree species, Terry created a cottage industry in canopy studies both with the fogging technique of collecting canopy arthropods, but also in trying to estimate the number of species on the planet. In that paper, he had hypothesized that there were as many as 30 million species worldwide, an order of magnitude difference from the existing estimates at the time predicting just 1 million. A lot of people got excited, especially those in the Conservation business. If true, this meant that the world was losing a lot more species than previously imagined. The tiny 1.5-page paper that Terry wrote 34 years ago, has now been cited more than 1000 times.

Today, Terry continues his studies of biodiversity in the western Amazon Basin, at present in Ecuador. He has also not forgotten his favorite beetles, currently conducting taxonomic studies on carabids, particularly those genera living in the rainforest canopy. Being a prolific author he has written altogether (as of 20 November 2015) 270 papers, books, and monographs, most of them dealing with his favorite coleopterans. Keep up with Terry's publications on Google Scholars.

More information about Terry Erwin and his exciting career can be found in Rice ME (2015) Terry L. Erwin: She Had a Black Eye and in Her Arm She Held a Skunk. American Entomologist, volume 61, number 1, republished in ZooKeys 500: 9–24. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.500.9772.

Figure 1–12. 

Photos of species described by Terry Erwin. 1 Agra katewinsletae Erwin, 2002 2 A. vation Erwin, 1983 3 A. schwarzeneggeri Erwin, 2002 4 A. grace Erwin, 2010 5 A. risseri Erwin, 2010 6 A. liv Erwin, 2002 7 A. vate Erwin, 1986 8 Mizotrechus bellorum Erwin, 2011 9 M. edithpiafae Erwin, 2011 10 Hybopteroides karolynae Erwin & Ball, 2012 11 Badister amazonus Erwin & Ball, 2011 12 Guyanemorpha spectabilis Erwin, 2013. Photos: Karolyn Darrow.