“Watching the birds was extremely interesting and stimulating. There was always something new to see, and many observations would make you ask ‘why are they doing that’? Some observations would provoke analyses that contributed to a paper. An example of this was the observation that certain females would sit by particular males and engage them in courtship at times when another female tried to approach them.”

“We could only do experimental pollinations of those figs when individual figs (syconia) were in two specific stages: when some were releasing pollen-carrying wasps, and others were receptive to pollination. This was rare and you had to be ready for it. When we sensed that this was coming, we would take figs about to release wasps into the lab [...], and leave them in covered petri dishes. The wasps leave the figs, and mill around in the dish. The dish would then be taken into the field, and individual wasps picked up with a tiny paintbrush and placed on figs that looked receptive. If we were right (the wasps knew; we couldn’t tell), then the wasps would burrow into the fig.”

“We created the experiment in the days prior to GPS. We used a tape measure, loppers and machetes to cut shrubs, and a laser transit.”

“We did the analysis on spreadsheets, which again, you would never do now”

“We didn’t have email in those times but I would send him [EO Wilson] information by mail, and I would go back periodically.”

“We finished the paper and submitted it to Nature. The editor rejected it without review because of “insufficient interest to researchers in a broad range of other disciplines”. Therefore we promptly reformatted the manuscript and submitted it to Science. Here it had a completely different reception. The manuscript was sent out for review, and all three reviewers plus editor were highly enthusiastic about it. The paper was accepted with some minor changes at the end of May and published six weeks later.”

“We first submitted the paper to Nature but it was rejected, so we rewrote the paper for Animal Behaviour. Nature has a very strict word limit, so the first draft of the paper for Nature was a lot less expansive than the Animal Behaviour version.”

“We had a really simple question, actually: are introduced populations less parasitized than their native counterpart populations, if you look at species pairs. One thing that we were not able to do is look at how that translates into the performance of introduced species. I think now data are accumulating to do that. And the question is much more complex. But there are much more data assessing some of those components, that it would be worth exploring that further, to see the extent to which that question could be addressed now.”

“We have improved our measures of network patterns and the use of null models. We have also a more complete data set. More importantly, there is now abundant theory trying to make sense of these network patterns. But overall, I think it is fair to say the paper remains as valid today as it was back in 2003 in the sense of advocating the existence of simple patterns in the architecture of species-rich mutualisms.”

“We have many more good empirical measures of costs now, but not one of the big conceptual questions I posed in this paper has been answered yet! Go for it!! Mutualism is a very young field, and there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit for an enterprising biologist.”

“We have now studied the dispersal of many more species. Not only have our conclusions from 2003 been supported, we have found increased dispersal in even more types of species with different modes of dispersal, such as wind-dispersed plants. My take-home lesson from this has been that the effects of corridors on dispersal are very broad and general.”

“We provided an additive partitioning with two components, because we wanted it to be as simple as possible and as transparent as possible. Jeremy Fox and others have developed our approach to build equations with three or more components. Although mathematically correct, I don’t feel these more complex equations have led to major new discoveries so far, because the new components don’t always have a clear interpretation. To be honest, I was not especially interested in developing the method. It’s not a kind of magical recipe that will solve all problems. I have never believed in that kind of thing. I prefer to concentrate on new questions and not just to refine one particular approach. But that’s my bias. I know some people like to continue building what they have done. I’m different. Once I solve a problem I tend to move to another problem. That’s my way of doing science.”

“We send floppy disks by FedEx to exchange data!”

“We submitted it in June 1987, we got comments back quite quickly obviously because we revised it in October and then it was accepted in February and published in December. Back then that was pretty fast. In this day and age, with online publishing, we would have got it out much faster.”

“We submitted it to Nature first. We got rejected, we appealed, and the appeal was accepted. But then it got rejected again. Then it also got rejected at Science, the first time. But Mark already had a name for himself, and so the editor at Science actually called him up and said: ‘Why should we publish this?’ I think Mark did a very good PR job on it. Despite all this, I think this paper probably had a smoother ride than many of my other papers.”

“We submitted it to Science first, and it didn’t go out for review”

“We thought it was newsworthy and decided to shoot for the top journals. We, actually, sent it to Nature first, where it was rejected without review.”

“We use a 10-meter pole with a clipper on the end to cut and collect cones. I’m not strong enough to do it by myself, but several of my students are. I’ve visited all these sites, and we just camp, usually in a campground or just out somewhere in the forest, and we work all day. And then, often, in the afternoon, we’ll go for a hike and write up field notes. And then repeat that day after day until we’re done.”

“We used drafting tables and drafting equipment. I had a Leroy Lettering Set made by Keuffel & Esser, which had templates for letters, numbers, etc. You used a stylus that followed the grooved letters on the templates, and wrote the letter on white drafting paper. You just had to space everything by eye, and judge letter sizes the same way. Mistakes could be covered with something called “white-out.” Because you wanted to avoid having a lot of do-overs, I’d make all figures by hand beforehand on graph paper. I doubt that Leroy Lettering sets are still made; when I looked on the web, they are referred to as vintage, and available on sites like ebay.”

“We used wild-caught male three-spined sticklebacks that differed in the intensity of their red breeding coloration after we had transferred them each to a small tank equipped with nesting material. We showed them each a gravid female in a small tank positioned 5 min per day in front of each male’s tank to stimulate his motivation to build a nest and display. After all males had build nests and achieved a stable coloration, we asked students from a course that took place in the same building to estimate the degree of redness of each male and give one point for the dullest and 10 for the brightest. This is possible because humans and sticklebacks have three color receptors in their retina with the same range of sensitivity. So, sticklebacks see red in the same way as we do.”