Hugh Dingle: 1936-2026

UC Davis Professor Emeritus Richard Douglas Hugh Dingle, considered “the world’s eminent scholar on animal migration,” a brilliant scientific collaborator, dedicated mentor, and selfless philanthropist, died Sunday, Sept. 27, while receiving hospice care in Davis. His family attributed his death to congestive heart failure.

A resident of Larkspur, Marin County, he was 89, and looking forward to his 90th birthday on Nov. 4.

Professor Dingle, known as “Hugh,” served on the faculty of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now Entomology and Nematology), from 1982 to 2002. 

Although he retired in 2002, he never retired from research. "He considered retirement as an opportunity to try something new," commented Professor Emerita Sharon Lawler.

 As an emeritus, Dingle shared research space from 2010-2023 in Lawler's lab, where he engaged in research, organized global symposiums, presented programs, collaborated with numerous scientists, and mentored students. He founded the Sean and Anne Duffey and Hugh and Geraldine Dingle Graduate Research Fellowship in 2014.

Widely Acclaimed Books

Dingle authored two editions of his widely acclaimed book, Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move (Oxford University Press).  National Geographic featured him in its cover story on Great Migrations”in November 2010.  LiveScience interviewed him for its November 2010 piece on Why Do Animals Migrate? 

Professor Dingle's research interests included not only insect migration and life histories, but quantitative genetics, behavior, photo-periodism, and life history flexibility and variation. He engaged in research throughout the world, including the United Kingdom, Kenya, Thailand, Panama, Germany and Australia. 

“Hugh will be greatly missed,” said molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the department. “He was a dear friend and an incredibly generous mentor to me, and I am sure to a lot of other students and colleagues. His endowment of the Sean and Anne Duffey and Hugh and Geraldine Dingle Graduate Research Fellowship is a testament to his generosity. The Department of Entomology and Nematology will be forever grateful for his support of graduate student education.”

“Hugh retired before I started my position at UC Davis,” Chiu added. “Despite that, when I started my lab, he reached out to me and wanted to learn more about everything we work on in the lab and he gave me tips on how to teach insect physiology, a course he used to teach. We managed to collaborate on one project to study migration of monarch butterflies, one of his favorite insects. I volunteered to stay in my lab to process the samples, while he and a student got to go to Guam to collect specimens. I am going to miss his smile and our regular ‘work lunches’ where we discussed everything from research to good food.”

'Incredibly Fortunate'

“I count myself incredibly fortunate to have been his friend and colleague,” Lawler said. “Hugh was an extraordinary researcher and teacher, a staunch supporter of his trainees, a warm friend, and a wonderful family man. Hugh led an inspiring and adventurous life spurred by his intellectual curiosity and his love of people and nature (especially birds!). I will miss him tremendously."

Born in Malaysia

Born Nov. 4, 1936 in Penang, Malaysia to Walter Hugh Dingle and Mildred Burns Porter, Hugh graduated from Princeton High School, Princeton, N.J., and received his bachelor’s degree in zoology, with honors, from Cornell University in 1958; his master’s degree in zoology from the University of Michigan in 1959; and both his master’s degree (1959) and doctorate (1962) in zoology from the University Michigan. He fulfilled a 1962-63 National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, UK. 

“Hugh is considered the world’s eminent scholar on animal migration," Lawler wrote in a 2015 awards packet. "He and his incredible achievements have brought great recognition to our department, our college, our campus, our UC system and beyond. Despite his ‘retirement,’ Hugh continues to research, publish, lecture, mentor students, collaborate with fellow scientists and field calls from the media.” 

In her 2015 letter, Lawler described his inaugural migration book as “without a doubt, the global authoritative book on migration, encompassing diverse taxa and the behavioral, physiological, ecological and evolutionary aspects of migration.”

“Although he 'retired’ 13 years ago, he maintains an office in my lab…he is exceedingly generous of his time and knowledge," she wrote. "He is a world-class scholar, whose research is typified by creative insights and exceptional clarity. His integrative research on migration has transformed the field by drawing on evolutionary and ecological principles, and his ideas are backed up with incisive experiments and well-targeted field research."

'Wonderful Mentor'

"Hugh is also a wonderful mentor. He was really welcoming when I was a junior faculty member, and continues to be a fantastic resource for early-career scientists on our campus," Lawler related. "Whenever I come across a student who is interested in animal movement I send them to Hugh, and invariably his door is open and the students leave with new and valuable insights.”

“Indeed, the name ‘Hugh Dingle’ is synonymous with ‘Animal Migration.’ His work continues to have an enormous impact on scientists who study migration as well as the general citizenry seeking more information on a subject that ranges from whales to monarch butterflies.” 

'Small Man, Mighty Shadow'

 UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emeritus Art Shapiro, a noted Lepidoptera researcher who has monitored butterfly populations in Central California since 1972 (https://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/),  commented: “Hugh was a physically small man who cast a mighty shadow as one of the world's leading authorities on animal migration. He was one of a handful of colleagues who made me oh, so proud to be in such exalted company here at Davis. At the end of his life, he was heavily invested in Monarch biology, and I kept him abreast of my field observations right up to the end. He will be much missed."

Don R. Reynolds of the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, characterized  Hugh Dingle as an “international treasure.”

Said research collaborator Professor Louie Yang: “Hugh was an amazing friend and colleague. His tremendous scholarly contributions will leave a lasting legacy, and more so for the generations of students that he has encouraged, advised and mentored over many years. Moreover, he was a friend when I was a student, and was a friend to the end. He was always curious about nature, generous with his time, and kind in spirit. He will be sorely missed.”

Fellow of AAAS

Highly honored by his peers,  Dingle was elected a Fellow of the American Association of Science in 1975 and a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society in 1999.  He served as president of the international Animal Behavior Society from 1994-1995;  secretary of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology from 1988-1990; and as an honorary research consultant, University of Queensland, Australia, from 2003-2010. Dr. Dingle received the Senior Distinguished Scientist Award from the Alexaner v. Humboldt Foundation, Germany, in 1992.  

His close friends and research colleagues, Jenella Loye and Scott Carroll, remember his “consistent generosity to every person he met”  and shared a love of insects and research, particularly soapberry bugs.  “We are so grateful for our relationship with him...He and Jeri (wife Geraldine, 1940-2018) were like parents to us. We became regular members of the family, and we will always treasure those memories.”

“Scott and I met Hugh when I was a post-doc  at Berkeley,” Loye recalled. “Because we admired his work, we just tooled over to his lab in Davis and walked in for an appointment and started talking bugs and never stopped! He and Scott just fell in love with each others' projects and immediately started working on a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant together. The writing involved some fun trips for us from Utah to Davis to stay with Hugh and Jeri and their family, getting to know everybody. Hugh was so open and so brilliant. It took only a few tries for their NSF and mine as well to get funded, and we were on our way to Davis to be part of Hugh's lab for the rest of his life.”

On the Bug Trail

“Our gang of three started traveling on the bug trail early on since a lot of the work involved collecting the populations he and Scott worked with later in population genetics," Loye related. "On our first big trip together to Florida Keys and the Bahamas we didn't know each other that well, but it was clear that Hugh had created habits that made his travel very efficient. for instance, he always stayed in certain hotels and ate at certain places. In contrast, we had been living in a van in the Florida Keys for many years doing the research on bug life histories and genetics, and hung out with quite the variety of people often in seemingly sketchy situations. So, he stayed with us in odd little bed-and-breakfasts. We became lifelong friends with the owners/artists that we visited regularly.”

“Hugh was flexible," she said. "In the Bahamas, I had to bail out of the Hilton that he had booked because it had mold-infested carpeting and air conditioning, so I went down to the dock area and found a wonderful open, airy hotel full of tile in the old style of Central American architecture. It was inexpensive. People were friendly.  We booked in. Hugh moved in with us. He was cool with it all, despite the fact that it we learned that night that we were in Prostitution and Pimp Central." The trio became friends with "some of the pimps, who sent us up into the Highlands to their aunties’ houses to look for bugs. I was so impressed Hugh just went with it.”

Commenting on his friendliness, flexibility and generosity, Loye traced those qualities to his childhood. "Hugh knew what it was like to be scared and alone and different and could relate to every kind of person,” Loye said. “When he was a child refugee from Malaysia, having recently lost his father in Burma at age five,  his mother took him back to the United States where she tried to stay with several different siblings…she was a single mom and life was tough. Hugh, though only five, never forgot the people who were compassionate, the ones who reached out and helped them.  He carried those qualities throughout his life; he was always there to reach out and help anyone.”

Edward Dickson Award

Dingle received the 2014 UC Davis Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award to pursue research on “Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) in the Pacific: Is Contemporary Evolution Occurring on Isolated Islands?” His work encompassed three Pacific Islands, Oahu (Hawaii), Guam (Marianas) and Weno (Chuuk or Truk).

In his research, Dingle noted that the monarch butterflies established just 200 years ago in remote Pacific islands are undergoing contemporary evolution through differences in their wing span and other changes. He collaborated with Yang and Chiu to examine the ecology and physiology of monarch butterflies in three islands, where contemporary evolution might be expected. The islands:  Oahu (Hawaii), Guam (Marianas) and Weno (Chuuk or Truk).

“I've had the pleasure of working with Hugh since 2000, and I've always been impressed by his natural history insights and his sharp analytical mind,” Yang said in a 2015 interview. “Hugh has an uncommon ability to link insights from multiple levels of biology, from broad evolutionary patterns to physiological mechanism. He is creative, curious and adventurous! His deep knowledge of natural history (not just insects, but also birds, plants and more) allows him to put new ideas into a meaningful context, and I've always been impressed by his relentless pursuit of new knowledge. He continues to attend multiple seminars each week, and works to learn new methods, just to broaden his understanding of the field. True to form, Hugh has also been particularly enthusiastic about working with a graduate student on this project. We've been finding some interesting patterns, and it has been a real joy to work with Hugh.”

'Extremely Generous'

Dingle also collaborated with the lab of Professor Santiago Ramirez, Department of Evolution and Ecology. “Hugh was extremely generous with his knowledge and time,” said Ramirez, “and he offered a lot of help to my former Ph.D. student, Dr. Micah Freedman, who studied monarch populations and migration around the world. Hugh’s work on migratory behavior has been, and continues to be, very influential.”

“This is tough to hear (the passing of Hugh Dingle),” said Freedman, now an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. "I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Hugh at UC Davis. What a serendipitous coincidence that I started graduate school with an interest in Pacific Island monarch butterflies, and there just so happened to be a professor at Davis who was already planning a trip to Guam to study them! Hugh helped to cultivate my early interests in monarchs and animal migration and had a major influence on my development as a student. I am also grateful to Hugh for introducing me to Myron Zalucki and joining us for a few weeks in Brisbane, Australia in 2016.”

“I feel very fortunate to have had the chance to learn from Hugh, and I know that I am not alone in that sentiment,” Freedman said. “He was a co-author on two of the papers from my dissertation research, and I kept in touch with him about experiments I was conducting even after leaving UCD. I am now in the position of advising my own graduate students at the University of Toronto, and the first book that I gave to my first PhD student was Hugh's 2014 edition of Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move. Hugh's work and ideas continue to inspire me and countless other people, and I was lucky to call him a mentor and a friend.”

Yang shared that “Hugh designed the project, focusing on understanding populations of monarch butterflies in the Pacific (Dickson award), led the project and the field trip to Guam, and found funding for it. The monarch butterflies are generally thought to have expanded across the Pacific less than 200 years ago, and this recent colonization of very isolated habitats raises several interesting new questions…He collaborated with friends and colleagues around the world to gather additional data.”

News Media

Professor Dingle shared his expertise with not only scientists but with the news media. He responded to a front-page article published Sept. 23, 2022 in a Marin County paper about a countywide ban on tropical milkweed. Banning tropical milkweed, A. curassavica, will NOT save the monarch, Dingle emailed the reporter. In fact, he said, the ban will "essentially have zero effect on monarchs" and "no one should rush out and pull out their tropical milkweed as it would be a waste of time and effort. Nurseries should also be able to continue to sell it."

Dingle and his wife of 58 years, Geraldine (1940-2018), raised three daughters, Jennifer, Hilary and Alex. When he retired in 2002, the couple “settled in Brisbane for seven years and took full advantage of outback camping and travel to India, Thailand, Madagascar, the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, South Africa, Borneo, and an island-hopping repositioning cruise from New Zealand to Japan,” according to the March 9, 2018 obituary in the Davis Enterprise.

Professor Dingle is survived by his partner, Margot Jasie, of Larkspur; his daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren. Memorial donations can be made to the Sean and Anne Duffey and Hugh and Geraldine Dingle Graduate Research Fellowship, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. See https://give.ucdavis.edu/AENM/17097. 

Resources:

Books, Oxford University Press: “Migration: The Biology of Life on the Move,” first edition (1996) and second edition (2014). The second edition is an open access file.   

Prabook: Richard Douglas Hugh Dingle, Researcher, Biology Professor

Phys.Org: Milkweed, Monarchs, Men and Madness, July 30, 2015

National Geographic: Great Migrations, cover story featuring Hugh Dingle, November 2010. 

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Two Centuries of Monarch Butterfly Collections Reveal Contrasting Effects of Range Expansion and Migration Loss on Wing Traits, Nov. 2, 2020.

BIOLOGICAL Journal: Non-Migratory Monarch Butterflies, Danaus plexippus (L.), Retain Developmental Plasticity and a Navigational Mechanism Associated with Migration, January 2018.

UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, Bug Squad blog: Hugh Dingle Explains Biology of Life on the Move. Nov. 3, 2014.

UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, Bug Squad blog: Monitoring the Monarchs. Dec. 5, 2014. 

Bioscience: What Is Migration?  Pod talks, February, 2007.

Davis Enterprise: Monarch Butterfly and Hugh Dingle. Dec. 2, 2014.

Davis Enterprise: Geraldine Dingle obituary, March 9, 2018