Honorary Life Members

Ian Bayly completed an MSc in New Zealand in the 1950s and then a PhD at University of Queensland. He then taught at the University of Queensland for 5 years (1959-1964) before taking up a lectureship at Monash University where he spent 25 years (1971-1996) before retiring in 1996.

During his time at Monash University, he established himself as Australia's foremost zooplankton specialist, undertaking research in Australia, South America and the Antarctic.

Additionally, with Prof Bill Williams he helped to establish Australia (and Monash) as a world-renowned centre for salt lake research, an area that was at the time dominated by scientists in Europe and the United States. Australian salt lakes differed from those in the rest of the world in that they are generally dominated by sodium and chloride and not calcium and bicarbonate. In fact, one of the earlier Williams/Bayly papers was rejected on the basis that they had reported an incorrect ionic composition for their salt lakes.

Together with Prof Bill Williams and others he helped establish the Australian Society for Limnology in the 1960s. In the early days of the Society the bulk of the members were from Monash University. Ian also supervised a number of PhD candidates, many who became leaders in Australian freshwater research, including Keith Walker and Mike Geddes. In recognition of his contribution, Ian was awarded the ASL medal in 1975.

Ian has also been a long-time conservation activist being heavily involved in the fights for Lake Pedder and the Franklin River in Tasmania and Dartmouth Reservoir in Victoria. He is still very active in commenting on issues of the day - see his web site 'Pearls and Irritations'.

In summary, Dr Ian Bayly is a very worthy candidate for honorary life membership of the Australian Freshwater Sciences Society.

Emeritus Professor Sam Lake was an internationally renowned ecologist, with 45+ years of ground-breaking research on the ecology of perennial and ephemeral rivers. Additionally he has researched a variety of other ecosystems: wetlands, farm dams and more. Crustaceans are a long-time love. Some of his most compelling research was on the iconic crabs of Christmas Island (with Dennis O’Dowd).

Sam authored/co-authored seven books and >200 papers and book chapters, producing a lasting impact on the literature. A major theme was the effects of disturbance. Sam’s 2000 review paper on how disturbance concepts were being muddled and misapplied to droughts was recently identified as foundational to river ecology (Foundations of River and Stream Ecology, 2024). Sam supervised at least 65 Honours/Masters students and 36 PhD students, many of whom went on to stellar careers in academia, government and environmental organisations. Sam is also well-known for his passion for conservation. Over many years, he collected (unfunded) data on the drowned Lake Pedder with a hopeful view to its eventual restoration, and he served on numerous (> 50) advisory, consultative and other external committees or consultancies, creating a lasting legacy of environmental protection.

This extraordinary career has been recognised both nationally and internationally.

1967: the Thomas Henry Huxley Award for the best Ph.D. thesis in zoology submitted to the Zoological Society of London;

· 1980: the Jolly Award from the Australian Society for Limnology (now AFFS);

· 1988: the Australian Bicentennial Authority Heritage Award (with Professor A.J. McComb);

· 2002: the Award of Excellence of the North American Benthological Society (now SFS);

· 2003: the prestigious Naumann-Thienemann Medal from the International Society for Limnology;

· 2006: the Gold Medal from the Ecological Society of Australia, and

· in 2014, he became an Officer of the Order of Australia

Sam passed away peacefully in Melbourne on April 17, 2025. His contribution to Freshwater Science will live forever.

Professor Brian Timms is a world leader on the crustaceans of Australia’s salt lakes, particularly fairy shrimp and clam shrimp. Recently he dipped into the fauna of “gnammas”, which are holes in rock where temporary pools form.

He has authored more than 180 publications, with more to write! In 1992 he wrote the definitive textbook on lake geomorphology and had only one publication on clam shrimp at that time. After 2000, Brian became fascinated with large branchiopods and travelled the length and breadth of Australia to find them, publishing 110 papers in this time, almost entirely focused on these crustaceans.

Brian is an amazing taxonomist. Of the Australian branchiopod crustacean fauna, Brian described (alone or with others) 30 of the 62 Australian anostracan species, and one anostracan genus. He has described four of the six Australian laevicaudatan clam shrimp species. He has described 40 of the 69 Australian spinicaudatan clam shrimp species, and one of the genera. On top of that, he has described 17 species and five genera of Australian cladocerans. Since the year 2000, Brian Timms discovered and described some 54% of the fairy shrimp and clam shrimp diversity of Australia and New Zealand. Brian also has had around a dozen species named in his honour.

Brian is an important part of AFSS and its history. For many years he wrote a dedicated section in the “ASL” newsletter called “In timms gone by” which was always humorous and informative. Brian was awarded the Hilary Jolly Medal in 2002.

Barb Downes has been a member of the Australian Society for Limnology and its successor the Australian Freshwater Sciences Society (AFSS) for many years. She has regularly attended the annual meetings, given many talks about her research and has introduced her graduate students to the freshwater community through these meetings. Barb is well known for her research on river ecology, particularly that related to aquatic insects, starting at Monash University in the late 1980s and continuing at the University of Melbourne where she became a professor in the School of Geography. She has an enviable research and publication record, including textbooks of fundamental significance, such as “Monitoring Ecological Impacts: concepts and practice in flowing waters. Barb retired from teaching several years ago having supervised dozens of students at Honours and PhD level, but is still actively pursuing her research on stream insects, especially Trichoptera. For the past decade or so she has concentrated on the egg laying habits of various caddis fly species, the factors that determine where eggs are laid on the stream bed and the dispersal of adult caddis within and between catchments. These are fundamental but neglected aspects of the ecology of aquatic insects. Barb was awarded the ASL Medal in 2011 and delivered the Lungfish Lecture at the Brisbane meeting in 2023. Life membership of AFSS is a fitting recognition of her career and her many contributions to freshwater science.