It is sad to report the death of Professor Jerry Patterson from an inoperable brain tumour on 24 July 1991, after a short illness. Jeremy William Patterson was born in Croydon, Surrey on 31 December 1944. He was interested in reptiles from an early age, and joined the British Herpetological Society in 1963. Jerry made many contributions to the herpetology of Britain, Europe, and Southern Africa, after a training in general and applied zoology.
Jerry attended St Catharine's College, Cambridge from 1964 to 1967, gaining a B.A. honours degree in Natural Sciences (Zoology). He then took an M.Sc. (with distinction) in Medical Parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), part of the University of London. After his M.Sc. was completed in 1969, Jerry stayed at the LSHTM to work for a Ph.D. This was awarded in 1972, for the thesis "The influence of juvenile hormone mimics on the metamorphosis and fertility of mosquitoes, and other bloodsucking insects". The work, designed to control the insect vectors of tropical diseases, continued during a postdoctoral fellowship at LSHTM from 1971 to 1974. The major results are to be found in a series of seven papers from 1973-1979, mostly in the prestigious Journal of Insect Physiology.
Jerry's opportunity to do herpetological research came when he went to the University of Nottingham in 1974. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Peter Davies until the end of 1977. Jerry's interests at that time centred on the thermal biology of lizards, and their adaptations to cool climates. Much of the fieldwork was done at Calpe in Spain as described in Jerry's first herpetological paper, published in the British Journal of Herpetology in 1977. Most of this work was published in the late 1970s, although some continued to appear up to the time of his death (e.g. Patterson, 1990b).
Perhaps the major finding of this period was that the pattern of acclimation to temperature in lizards differs from the classic pattern described for aquatic ectotherms. Lizards regulate their daytime body temperatures to high levels, at all seasons when they are active. However, they have no control over body temperature at night, and so this fluctuates substantially through the year. Lizards compensate for these fluctuations by a seasonal change of metabolism at low, but not at high, temperatures (Patterson and Davies, 1978c).
Jerry's contribution to British herpetology was made during this period, when he worked on Lacerta vivipara and Anguis fragilis. These lizards were selected as cool temperate examples to pair with the warm temperate Podarcis hispanica and Chalcides bedriagai from Spain. Jerry was also interested in the British species in their own right. He investigated how the common lizard copes with the long winter, and various aspects of the ecology of the slow worm, an animal in which he had a longstanding interest.
In December 1977 Jerry left for Southern Africa, where he worked for the remainder of his career. His first appointment was as a lecturer in the University of Zambia, which he held until 1980. Jerry then moved to Chancellor College, University of Malawi, where he stayed until 1988, being successively a lecturer, senior lecturer and reader. From 1989 until his death he was an Associate Professor at the University of Zimbabwe.
Most of Jerry's research in Africa was herpetological. In Malawi, he began a study of the adaptations of tropical lizards, work which he was actively publishing at the time of his death. The first results were an extension of his work in Europe. He found that montane skinks which experienced wide annual variation in climate showed acclimation to temperature, but individuals of the same species from lower altitudes did not (Patterson, 1984). He proposed that the low altitude skinks had never been exposed to the cold, and so to selection for the ability to acclimate.
The later African papers focussed more on ecological energetics (e.g. Patterson 1990a, 1991). They marked the progression of his thought from purely physiological questions of growth in insects, through the ecophysiology of adaptation to cold, to purely ecological questions of reproductive allocation. The period from 1989 was particularly productive, and promised to surpass his publication activity of the late 1970s. Jerry's early death is a substantial loss to herpetology in respect of the publication of this earlier work, as well as of his current research.
Jerry was a mine of information on the herpetofauna of Southern Africa, and had many active projects at the time of his death. These ranged from the seasonality of amphibian reproduction, the comparative biochemistry of jumping muscles in anurans, to lizard reproduction and thermal biology. Jerry was always concerned with the care of animals used in his research. It is characteristic that during his final illness, before its seriousness was diagnosed, his major concern was for a group of Pachydactylus tigrinus, to be used in a comparison of diurnal and nocturnal geckos.
Jerry was invited to present a paper at the First World Congress of Herpetology in Canterbury in 1989. Subsequently he gave papers at meetings of the American Physiological Society and the IUCN African Amphibian Working Group; a measure of the breadth of his knowledge. Jerry also published on biological research and education in Africa. He was a respected figure in Southern African biology, for example being the external examiner in Zoology for the National University of Lesotho. He is survived by a wife and two sons.
Patterson, J. W. and Davies, P. M. C. (1977). Notes on the herpetology of the Costa Blanca in spring. British Journal of Herpetology 5, 685-686.
Patterson, J. W. and Davies, P. M. C. (1978a). Preferred body temperature: seasonal and sexual differences in the lizard Lacerta vivipara. Journal of Thermal Biology 3, 39-41.
Patterson, J. W. and Davies, P. M. C. (1978b). Energy expenditure and metabolic adaptation during winter dormancy in the lizard Lacerta vivipara Jacquin. Journal of Thermal Biology 3, 183-186.
Patterson, J. W. and Davies, P. M. C. (1978c). Thermal acclimation in temperate lizards. Nature 275, 646-647.
Patterson, J. W., Davies, P. M. C., Veasey, D. A. and Griffiths, J. R. (1978). The influence of season on glycogen levels in the lizard Lacerta vivipara Jacquin. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology 60B, 491-494.
Davies, P. M. C., Patterson, J. W. and Bennett, E. L. (1980). The thermal ecology, physiology and behaviour of the viperine snake, Natrix maura: some preliminary observations. In Coborn, J. (Editor). Proceedings of the European Herpetological Symposium, p107-116. Cotswold Wild Life Park.
Davies, P. M. C., Patterson, J. W. and Bennett, E. L. (1981). Metabolic coping strategies in cold tolerant reptiles. Journal of Thermal Biology 6, 321-330.
Patterson, J. W. and Davies, P. M. C. (1982). Predatory behaviour and temperature relations in the snake Natrix maura. Copeia 1982, 472-474.
Patterson, J. W. and Pierce, M. A. (1982). Intraerythrocytic parasites of reptiles from Lochinvar National Park, Zambia. African Journal of Ecology 20, 293-295.
Patterson, J. W. (1983). Frequency of reproduction, clutch size and clutch energy in the lizard Anguis fragilis. Amphibia-Reptilia 4, 195-203.
Simbotwe, M. P. and Patterson, J. W. (1983). Ecological notes and provisional checklist of amphibians and reptiles collected from Lochinvar National Park, Zambia. Black Lechwe (New Series) No. 4, 17-22.
Patterson, J. W. (1984). Thermal acclimation in two subspecies of the tropical lizard Mabuya striata. Physiological Zoology 57, 301-306.
Patterson, J. W. and Davies, P. M. C. (1984). The influence of temperature, sexual condition, and season on the metabolic rate of the lizard Psammodromus hispanicus. Journal of Comparative Physiology B 154, 311-316.
Patterson, J. W. (1988). Glycogen levels in the liver of the tropical lizard Mabuya striata. Copeia 1988, 1066-1067.
Patterson, J. W. and Davies, P. M. C. (1989). A possible effect of climate on resting metabolic rate in lizards. Copeia 1989, 719-723.
Patterson, J. W. and McLachlan, A. J. (1989). Larval habitat duration and size at metamorphosis in frogs. Hydrobiologia 171, 121-126.
Patterson, J. W. (1990a). Female reproductive cycles in two subspecies of the tropical lizard Mabuya striata. Oecologia 84, 232-237.
Patterson, J. W. (1990b). Field body temperatures of the lizard Anguis fragilis. Amphibia-Reptilia 11, 295-299.
Patterson, J. W. (1991a). Rainfall and reproduction in females of the tropical lizard Mabuya striata striata. Oecologia 86, 419-423
Patterson, J. W. (1991b). Emergence, basking behaviour, mean selected temperature, and critical thermal minimum in high and low altitude subspecies of the tropical lizard Mabuya striata. African Journal of Ecology 29, 330-339.
Patterson, J. W. (1992). Seasonal variation in field body temperatures of the lizard Mabuya striata punctatissima. Amphibia-Reptilia 13, 243-250.
