Author Bio

The book is the result of an unusual collaboration between two brothers, one an "artistic scientist," the other a "scientific artist." Stephen Daubert has pursued science on the molecular level for thirty years at the University of California, Davis. His brother Chris Daubert is Professor of Art at Sacramento City College.

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Main Description

A Selection of the Discovery Channel Book Club

In sixteen stories Steve Daubert pulls the reader into the mystery and immediacy of ecological processes spanning a range from microscopic to tectonic, from microscopic to cosmic forces. Each tale brings the reader into the moment to witness an episode of survival in the wild first-hand. The material is presented on a level of intimacy and detail not usually encountered in other styles of natural history writing.

These creative non-fiction stories provide not just a bird's eye view (though that's true for the owls, warblers, condors, and hummingbirds in the book), but a wasp's eye view, a mouse's, a sea turtle's, a squid's. Sometimes the focus is as small as the detritus on the forest floor, or a single beat of the wing of a gull. Other stories range across evolutionary time. From whales and dinosaurs to creatures invisible to the naked eye, author and illustrator bring to life the dynamic interplay of living, evolving creatures and the natural forces that have shaped their worlds.

The book includes chapter notes that document the scientific basis for each story and describe the controversies still surrounding some of them -- a splendid resource for families to read and share.

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Reviews

Each of these happenings is a thread in the intricate web of life, and Daubert, a molecular scientist at the University of California, Davis, demonstrates that these threads are easily broken by humans . . . instructive and entertaining . . .
--Publishers Weekly

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Threads from the Web of Life takes readers on a journey around the globe as the author describes unique and unusual ecological processes. It is ideal for casual reading as well as a source of selections to read aloud (!) or to link literature with the study of natural history.
--NSTA [National Science Teachers Association] Recommends

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Highly recommended . . . The stories are as much enjoyable as they are informative.
--Science Books & Films

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Extras

Excerpts Showcase Beauty, Power of Threads from the Web of Life, Stories that Offer Eyewitness to Evolution
    
"For many years the sea bass grew, producing millions of eggs each season that floated away to the surface, none of which would grow to be as lucky as she had been. She prospered, increasing in bulk to the point that she matured further, metamorphosing to become a male. His jaw grew out, fixing his countenance in a permanent distemper that matched his new attitude. He was combative, chasing off schools of barracuda or blue fish; anything he could catch up with, he ate. He grew to nearly one hundred pounds, and each season he shed his milt over millions of grouper eggs. The hatchlings found their chances of survival improved if they did not drift back to the reef. His presence gave the other bass of his kind two choices as they matured in his dominion-stay away, or stay female."
    -from "Stories in the Sand," about the lifecycle of a giant fish


"Spider web tends to be a noctural hazard-the spiders take down their webs by day. The moths carry a solution to this problem-their investiture of loosely bound scales that gives them the ability to bounce off spider web, leaving only a patch of dust on the sticky strands that hold other insects."                         
     -from Science Notes to "The Living Wood," about micromoths


"Buoyed by the central updrafts of floating ring vortices, the pelicans can glide in a gentle descent across hundreds of miles of terrain each day. They move from the top of a lower column of rising air to the base of the next one higher up, like stepping from one escalator to the next while riding up between sequential sky levels, not flapping their wings for hours at a time."
    -from "Sighting in the Desert," about White Pelicans, modern pterodactyls that are the most likely source of the famous UFO sightings in Area 51 north of Las Vegas


"Five million years before [John] Muir arrived in the Sierra, one seed head from one tarweed plant departed the region. A dead bough from an overhanging tree fell and crushed a tarweed plant . . . crashing into the river far below. . . . For fifty days, the drowning log flew its wildflower ensign halfway across the tropical Pacific. It had been a journey of two months and six thousand miles. The next morning, a red and yellow bird with a finch-like bill found the driftwood log, inspected the seed head lying beside it, and destroyed it. She ate most of the seeds, the few that escaped her notice falling in the soil at her feet. Four months later, one of those seeds germinated."
    -from "Silversword," a scenario for how a plant from the Sierra Nevada mountains made its way to the Hawaiian islands, where it adapted, evolved, and colonized volcanic slopes


"The turtle poked up her head and labored for breath, struggling through the chop. The dawn had come only as a lightening of the overcast. She was in mid-ocean, pursuing her odyssey to the northeast nesting grounds a month out from the feeding grounds, halfway there, and she was in trouble."
    -from "Sea Green," about an injured Green sea turtle, forced far from her traditional migration track, founding a new nesting ground and eventually a new subspecies of turtle

Take a look at a sample chapter here.

Download the Teaching Guide Here.