It’s an appropriate honor for a man whose career has been dedicated to studying the so-called karst environment.
“I spent hundreds of hours in this teeny little cave” about 40 miles south of Portsmouth, Ohio, he said.
Hobbs and his students began working in the half-mile space in the early 1980s — first mapping it, then tracking the migration of crickets in and out, then studying other creatures, including crayfish, that thrive in the challenging environment.
Because they have no light and are not places where plants grow through photosynthesis, caves are ideal places to study how animals adapt.
One of the obvious facts is “they have to be able to tolerate darkness,” Hobbs said. Fundamentally, they have to survive in a “poor energy system.”
Some sacrifice eyesight and/or body pigments, which are “very costly from an energy standpoint,” Hobbs said.
Many evolve to shut down their metabolisms, like hibernating mammals in winter.
Hobbs’ descent into speoleology (the study of caves) began in the basement of his parents’ Virginia home, where his father, a legendary biologist, kept thousands of specimens of crayfish and other critters.
Summers spent on the hills and streams of a University of Virginia biology station familiarized the younger Hobbs with creatures when they weren’t stuck on slides.
And during a summer while he was a student at the University of Richmond that Hobbs was bitten by the biology bug.
Frustrated at his inability to identify tiny bi-valve creatures that live on crayfish his father had given him, Hobbs turned to his elder for help.
His father told him those species had never before been catalogued. To make that kind of discovery “was very exciting,” Hobbs said.
And when Hobbs III spotted a white crayfish in a cave — so different from the beautiful burrowing ones he’d found along the southeast coast — he went underground.
Hobbs soon discovered the excitement of exploring caves, both because of the physical challenges and sense of adventure. In 3,200 trips into more than 1,600 caves, he’s had some special moments.
Hobbs found Wittenberg a rich environment, too. His students had intellectual heft and his department was flexible in allowing him to combine research with teaching.
Through the whimsically named Wittenberg University Speleological Society (WUSS) and its journal, students published 100 papers. Although that’s less than half of Hobbs’ total of 225, some former students are “absolutely cutting-edge in their fields,” he said.
“My only regret is that my wife (Susan) passed away,” he said. That happened three years ago after 42 years of marriage.
Because of a lung condition developed from years spent in caves, Hobbs said his “hard core caving days are over.”
But at 67, he’s not too old to sneak back into a cave now and then — particularly one with his name on it.
Contact this reporter at tstafford@coxohio.com.
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