Tim McCay
Tim McCay grew up in the forests of western Pennsylvania and fell in love with the animals he found there. That passion for the wild never left, as McCay went on to pursue a career as a wildlife ecologist in the southeast. Like many in the modern earthworm field, worms weren’t always on McCay’s radar—he originally meant to study acid rain on the forest floor and how it affected shrews. But when it became overwhelmingly clear that earthworms were the single biggest driver of change in the forest floor, he shifted his focus.
McCay now runs the Earthworm Ecology Lab at Colgate University, where he is the Dunham Beldon Jr. professor of biology and environmental studies. McCay’s lab seeks to answer basic questions about how the three main species of jumping worm that are co-invading the US differ in their respective niches in the soil, in their eating habits, and where in the soil they prefer to lay cocoons—basic biological questions key to ultimately understanding how to control them.
McCay still likes to spend much of his free time in the forests, though now he’s in the forests of upstate New York with his family—and he enjoys the practice of woodworking, creating new bird and bat houses to support the wildlife closest to his home.
