David G. Frey Memorial Fund Fellowship : Department of Biology : Indiana University Bloomington

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Frey Memorial Fund Fellowship

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About David Frey

David G. Frey (1915-1992) earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1940 and spent the next five years working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, focusing his research on the ecology of fish. In 1946, he joined the zoology faculty at the University of North Carolina. Frey’s four years there focused on the Carolina Bay lakes, leading him into biogeography, the evolutionary origins of faunal assemblages, and studies of the formation and environmental history of lake basins. His work required a careful analysis of the paleoecological information contained in the sediments of the lakes. Frey’s pioneering paleoecological work made him a respected leader in the fields of paleoecology and paleolimnology.

He joined IU as an associate professor in 1950 and was promoted to professor in 1955. It was here that Frey forged the foundations of modern paleolimnology. He was the first to recognize the potential of Cladocera (water fleas) for paleoecological reconstructions and pioneered techniques to analyze their fragmentary remains. Because little information existed on the classification, evolutionary relationships, distribution patterns, and ecology of Cladocera, Frey undertook a comprehensive study of the most important Cladoceran family, Chydoridae. His research took him all over the world to collect specimens, gather ecological data, visit collections, work with colleagues, and organize countless international meetings on the subject.

Frey earned a Guggenheim Fellowships and two Fulbright Awards; was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters; received the prestigious Einar Naumann-August Thienemann Medal of the International Association of Limnology; and earned a Certificate of Commendation from the Ecological Society of America. He served as President of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography; President of the American Quaternary Association; President of the International Association of Limnology; Vice President of the American Microscopical Society; Senior Vice President of Societas Internationalis Limnologiae; the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Ecology; and the International Joint Commission on the Environment.

(Excerpted from a memorial tribute prepared by D. Whitehead, C. Nelson, and C. Cotton)

Alexander Strauss, 2013 David G. Frey Memorial Fund Fellowship Recipient

Alex samples the zooplankton communities from a mesocosm experiment designed to study friendly competition and the dilution effect. Courtesy photo

Alex is earning his Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. He is a member of Spencer Hall’s laboratory, and his research focuses on the community ecology of infectious disease, with a special focus on wildlife disease and conservation. Alex comes to us from Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned an A.B. in Environmental Studies, with minors in biology and music. In 2011, he earned a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Last year, he was first author on a paper published in Functional Ecology, “Invading with biological weapons: the importance of disease-mediated invasions.”