Keith Larson

For as long as he can remember, Keith always wanted to be a wildlife biologist. After his first two field seasons studying fish and then black bears, he discovered his passion for birds. Since then he has spent his life working as a field biologist, traveling the globe. This job has taken him all over the world, working primarily with seabirds and migratory songbirds. During this time he followed migratory birds from Alaska to Ecuador and Sweden to Ethiopia.  In between he managed to live with albatross on Midway Atoll and terns in the Americas.

Keith did his undergraduate work at The Evergreen State College in Washington State, and his Ph.D. at Lund University in Sweden.  Generally, he is interested in how life history traits evolve in response to environmental gradients, making migratory birds an excellent study system. Here he focuses on understanding the ecological factors and genetic adaptations that shape the migratory phenotype. For him, the best part of traveling the world as a biologist has been meeting people and sharing his love for science and natural history. Today he lives and works with his family above the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden, supporting climate research, looking for wolverines, and watching the northern lights in the winter.