Peyton M. West earned an undergraduate degree in English literature from Yale University, where she avoided science classes altogether. A love of animals led her to take several years of biology coursework, coincident with an internship@the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and a full-time job studying recombination in the soil bacterium Acinetobacter calcoaceticus. She received a Ph.D. in ecology, evolution and behavior from the University of Minnesota in 2003 and worked in the Mammal Department @the Bronx Zoo before taking time off to have a baby. Address: 1524 29th Street NW, Washington, DC 20007. Internet: west0302@umn.edu