My friend Roger Hughes, who has died of pulmonary fibrosis aged 71, was the Lloyd Roberts professor of zoology at Bangor University.
Youngest of three children of Caroline (nee Lingard) and Robert Hughes, both schoolteachers, Roger was born in Padiham, Lancashire. From an early age he was interested in ponds, streams and woods, and fishing in the local streams for trout. He attended Accrington grammar school, then the University College of North Wales (now known as Bangor University) and was awarded first-class honours in zoology in 1965. At the university’s marine laboratories he gained a PhD for research into the feeding and reproduction of a bivalve mollusc.
There he met Helen Holmes, also a marine scientist, and in 1968, on his return from a Royal Society expedition to Aldabra, a coral atoll in the Indian Ocean, he and Helen were married. His first appointment was at Dalhousie University, in Canada, on a Killam postdoctoral fellowship, where he researched the classification of marine benthic communities.
In 1971 Roger returned to Bangor to lecture in zoology. During his career, which also took him to research and teaching posts in the US, Chile, South Africa, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and many other places, he wrote 199 scientific papers and three influential books on marine organisms, including An Introduction to Marine Ecology (1982). His research into the feeding ecology of gastropod molluscs, crabs and sticklebacks resulted in his being awarded a DSc. Roger was also a generous and helpful colleague and supervisor to 63 postgraduate students and many postdoctoral fellows; he was appointed reader and then to a personal chair.
After retiring in 2011, Roger was appointed emeritus professor and continued as editor of three publications: the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, Marine Ecology Progress and Oceanography and Marine Biology: an Annual Review.
In his final public lecture, to school students, he explained how bubbles trapped in the plumage of Emperor penguins enable them to leap from the sea onto the ice – no mean feat for such a heavy, flightless bird. Afterwards Roger was mobbed for selfies by the students, therefore achieving his ultimate ambition: rock-star status.
Back in Wales, he was overtaken by illness but, even in his final weeks, he played lead guitar with his rock band the Scapegoats. Roger’s other passions were fishing on the River Ogwen and mountain walking in Snowdonia.
He is survived by Helen, their daughters, Ruth and Anne, and three grandsons; and by his brother, Michael.
