This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The story of Dan Blumstein's decision to share videos of marmots from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory field study on an OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms has captured attention around the world over the past few weeks. Sixty-four years of research into marmots can provide incredible insights into their evolution and socioecology, but the study is as expensive to run as it is valuable—and funding challenges have forced Blumstein, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and field chief editor of Frontiers in Conservation Science, to innovate in new and surprising ways.
In this installment of Frontier Scientists, Blumstein explains why this long-running study of yellow-bellied marmots is so important for science, how funding losses are putting it at risk and how he's fighting back. I've always been interested in nature and spent a lot of time outside—exploring, watching animals, hiking, climbing and skiing while growing up. As an undergraduate, I realized that there were careers in this area and that, if you were lucky, you could study animal behavior as a profession.
As a behavioral ecologist and conservation scientist, I do a lot of different things. I'm fascinated by how animals can coexist (or not) with humans and am involved in a number of studies trying to understand these relationships. I think deeply about how insights from behavioral biology can be applied to wildlife management and conservation.
I also co-direct the world's second-longest study that follows the fate of individually distinguishable, free-living mammals—the yellow-bellied marmots that live in and around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colorado. It was started in 1962 by Ken Armitage, and we've been following the fate of individually marked marmots ever since. Jane Goodall started studying chimpanzees in Tanzania in 1960.
Long-term studies create their own value. It's only through long-term ecological studies that we can study evolution in action and understand the nature of plasticity—which is one of the most important things to study in an era of major environmental change. Long-term studies educate people!
At the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab (RMBL), we have a K-gray education program, and I'm honored to be able to mentor several super-smart and motivated students each year. The graduate training opportunities that come from long-term studies are profound, since students can jump in and have years of data to work with or years of insights that permit them to design focused new experiments. Long-term studies also provide amazing opportunities for scientific outreach.
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