The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2024.

Mark M. Littler (1939-2023)  

Mark Masterton Littler, former Senior Scientist and Botany Departmental Chair, passed away on 25 July 2023 in New Mexico. He was 83 years old, born on 24 September 1939, in Athens, Ohio. Littler's lifelong passion for the outdoors began at an early age, fostered by explorations and fishing adventures in the aquatic habitats of his Appalachian surroundings. He discovered the thrill of saltwater fishing when his golf pro father moved the family to Key Biscayne, Florida, for the subsequent winters following the 1950 blizzard. He made his first scuba dive in 1955 in the upper Florida Keys at Fowey Rocks.  

Littler graduated from Ohio University with a B.S. in 1961 and continued his academic pursuits at the same institution, earning an M.S. in Botany, focusing on the seasonal cycles of phytoplankton. It was at this time that Littler met his future wife, Diane Scullion. The two became inseparable collaborative colleagues for the rest of their professional careers. One rarely mentioned just one of “the Littlers”, it was much more common to hear someone mention them as they always were, together. 

In 1971, Littler earned his Ph.D. in Marine Botany from the University of Hawaii under the mentorship of Max Doty, where he delved into the intricacies of coral-reef ecology and advanced research methodologies. Littler was fond of repeating one of Max Doty’s quotable sayings (regarding alpha taxonomy), “If you don’t do the taxonomy, you don’t know what you are talking about, but if all you do is taxonomy, you don’t have anything to say.”  

The Chair of the Department of Ecology, University of California, Irvine (UCI), talked Littler into accepting a tenure track position there a full year prior to completion of his doctoral degree. During his early career he held academic and research positions at various west coast universities, but remained a Biological Sciences Professorship UCI, where aside from studying the California coastal seaweed flora, he and Diane directed very large research programs (up to 55 full-time employees), focusing on the ecology and physiology of rocky intertidal ecosystems.  

In 1982 Littler was recruited to be the Chair of Botany at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), a position he held until 1987. Diane joined Mark in the department as a Research Associate. In 1985, he became a Senior Scientist and continued in that capacity until his 2012 retirement. The Littlers’ research was heavily dependent on fieldwork. During their entire tenure at the Botany Department, they spent each winter and summer season at the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce, Florida. Whether he was in DC or in Florida, Littler, ever the outdoorsmen, would hunt or fish to keep his Shagbark Hickory fed smoker at home fully stocked. It was easy to know when the two Littlers had returned home from Florida because tubs of his smoked mackerel spread “Smak” would appear with bowls of crackers outside the Botany Chairs office.  

Littler’s research took him to diverse marine habitats around the world, from tropical reefs throughout the Caribbean to the remote islands and shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. His contributions to marine science were extensive and impactful. He was one of the first to quantitatively document the importance of coralline algae to the structure and functioning of tropical coral reefs. Littler was a significant figure in the study of marine algal functional morphology and evolution, which explores how various marine algae species have evolved different anatomical, physiological, and ecological features, and how these features have contributed to their survival and success in their respective environments even if they are not closely related phylogenetically. The Littlers have held the record for discovering the deepest known living plant life on earth since 1983, a crustose coralline algae they found by submersible at 268 m depth on an uncharted seamount near San Salvador Island, Bahamas.  

Together the Littlers penned over 200 papers and books. They are well known for the wide-ranging topics of their taxonomical, ecological, and experimental physiology papers. They were also pioneers in using underwater (UW) photography for both illustrations and as a research tool. Their now 24-year-old book, Caribbean Reef Plants (OffShore Graphics, Inc), is still much sought after. The book’s production was a monumental task at the time when you consider it had hundreds of high-quality color in situ images. These photographs were all taken on 35mm Kodachrome film in SLR cameras that were encased in UW housings which limited the diver to 36 exposures per dive. His pioneering work and profound impact on the field of marine botany will be well remembered.

Mark is survived by his wife, Diane, of Silver City, New Mexico.

- Barrett Brooks