Soon after, Pierce was spending the summer at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colo.

And after graduating from Yale in '76, she was off to Japan and Australia to study "butterflies and their host plants north and south of the equator."

"Since then, I've never looked back," Pierce says.

Indeed, beginning with her first trip there, Pierce has developed an affinity for Australia, where she now spends three months of every year, living in cabins in the bush.

Now at Harvard, Pierce will spend one year exclusively doing research, and will begin teaching next fall. Pierce says she has been working with students ever since leaving college, serving as a teaching fellow in "just about every bio class at Harvard."

Meanwhile, the scholar looks forward to conducting research in the new laboratories on the top floor of the Museum of Comparative Zoology labs. There will be separate facilities for ants and for butterflies, complete with a common area where they can mingle.

And that's where you'll find Naomi Pierce.

A talent for tackling the tough questions about butterflies