Five Questions with Scott Reynolds
Longtime biology and chemistry teacher is the School’s own bat man.
BY KRISTIN DUISBERG
As a teenager, Scott Reynolds would regularly pass by St. Paul’s School on his way to Concord High School, never imagining the campus would one day be his home of 21 years and counting. The James W. Kinnear and Mary Tullis Kinnear Master of Science Chair says that among the things that keep him here are the students, who are as grounded as they are gifted; a great community of colleagues; and the opportunity to spend his summers pursuing his passion through an active research program focused on the population and conservation biology of bats. Reynolds holds a B.S. from McGill University and a Ph.D. from Boston University. He spoke with Kristin Duisberg.
Q1: Why bats?
The short answer is because I couldn’t study sea turtles. Coming out of undergrad, I wanted to study sea turtles, but I couldn’t find a graduate school I was happy with. In organismal biology, it’s really a question of who you study with, not necessarily what organism you study. I looked at B.U., and there was a really well-respected bat biologist there who was also a super nice guy, and if you wanted to work with him, you were going to work with bats. I got obsessed with them quickly.
Q2: Obsessed? What is it about bats that you find so engaging?
Bats live in the extreme. They’re the second-most abundant mammal — there’s more than a thousand species out there — and these tiny females, 35 or 40 grams, produce their offspring in an environment that’s on the edge of viability. They hibernate for seven months, they don’t eat, and then they produce one to two offspring in a five-month window. Nobody does it like they do. The reproductive energetics are fascinating.
Q3: Has that been the focus of your research, reproductive energetics?
That’s where I started, working at a long-term site, building relationships with the bats and the landowners. More recently, I’ve studied the impact of wind power development on bat populations, and also white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that’s wiped out huge bat populations.
Q4: You’re not just teaching, you’re also coaching advising, and doing dorm duty. How do you balance all that with your research?
All the activity for my first projects took place over the summer, and that’s why it worked. It got more complicated when I started getting involved in the wind energy industry, because the big issue [wind-turbine-related deaths during migration] takes place in fall and spring. So, I ended up developing systems that were automated. I’d spend my summer installing acoustic equipment, it would collect the data for me all fall and spring, and I’d spend my quiet times — winter and summer breaks — analyzing everything.
Q5: Do you ever wonder why you’re not doing this at a university, where balancing teaching and research is the norm?
I love doing it at this level. And I don’t want to do it Monday through Friday. I love the transition, love doing something very different in the summer. I love that it’s physical and hands-on work…. I’m still a blue-collar kid and the first in my family to ever get a college degree. Building stuff, playing with stuff, is what motivates me and stimulates me.