RIP Robin Overstreet

I learned yesterday that Dr. Robin Overstreet died.

Dr. Overstreet played a small but important part in my research. When I realized that things I was seeing in shrimp nerve cords were not staining artifacts but were alive, my colleague Brian Fredensborg contacted Dr. Overstreet. Robin generously keyed them out to the genus at least. Polypocephalus, a larval tapeworm.

I think the three papers I co-authored about that animal would have been much harder to sell to editors, reviewers, and readers, if we’d had to write something like, “Unidentified parasite A.”

I met Overstreet at a American Society for Parasitology meeting in San Antonio in 2017 in front of my poster. I was glad I was able to thank him for helping me, my student, and colleague. We talked a little about potential for more collaboration, but alas, it wasn’t to be.