Marston Bates

Marston Bates (July 23, 1906 – April 3, 1974) was an American zoologist. Bates' studies on mosquitoescontributed to the understanding of the epidemiology of yellow fever in northern South America.

Born in Michigan, Bates received a BS from the University of Florida in 1927. He received an AM in 1933 and a PhD in 1934, both from Harvard University. He lived for many years in Villavicencio between the mountains and the llanos in central Colombia. From 1952 until 1971 he was a professor at the University of Michigan. He was a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America in 1940 and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958. He was the author of many popular science books. He was married to Nancy Bell Fairchild, daughter of the botanist David Fairchild and granddaughter of Alexander Graham Bell.

In 1960, he published the ecological science book The Forest and the Sea, an introduction to how ecosystems work. He compares a rain forest and a tropical sea, their similarities and differences, and through it demonstrates how to understand biological systems.

• The Nature of Natural History (1950) Charles Scribner's Sons; New York; 309 pp.
• Where Winter Never Comes: A Study of Man and Nature in the Tropics (1952) Charles Scribner's Sons; New York
• The Natural History of Mosquitoes (1954) MacMillan; New York
• The Prevalence of People (1955) Charles Scribner's Sons; New York
• The Forest and the Sea (1960) Random House (1988) Lyons
• The Land and Wildlife of South America (1964) part of the Life Nature Library series
• Gluttons and Libertines: Human Problems of Being Natural (1968) Random House
• A Jungle in the House: Essays in Natural and Unnatural History (1970) Walker and Company