Jacinta and Meron Zalucki

As part of the first intake at Griffith University's Nathan campus in 1975, Dr Jacinta Zalucki (nee Just) was happy to combine her love of ecology with mathematics in the Australian Environmental Studies program. Her fascination with plant-animal interactions and pollination led her to an Honours year studying milkweeds with Professor Roger Kitching in 1978.

'Roger had a new PhD student from ANU in Canberra, who was a very bright young man with a keen intellect always eager to discuss big questions in ecology and evolution. He was working on the monarch butterfly, and my milkweeds were a host for monarchs—they laid their eggs on them and the newly emerged caterpillars started eating the leaves. Imagine The Very Hungry Caterpillar and that is an understatement—a 5^th instar larvae could demolish a milkweed plant in a day! I needed to plan my research carefully. I was a little bit intimidated by Meron and his hungry caterpillars. Love at first sight it was not!'

Time passes, and many long discussions followed regarding the evolutionary ecology and biology of insect-plant interactions. Jacinta and Meron married in November 1979—Meron was finishing his PhD at the time and Jacinta began work as a Research Assistant. Meron was the second PhD student to graduate from Griffith in 1981, and since then the couple have pursued successful academic careers.