Frank A. Pitelka

Frank A. Pitelka, whose studies of wildlife in the Arctic and California helped establish a field of study documenting the way environmental factors affect animal behavior, died Oct. 10 at his daughter ' s home in Altadena. He was 87.

An emeritus professor of zoology at the University of California Berkeley and a leader in the field of behavioral ecology, Dr. Pitelka conducted extensive research in the Alaskan tundra, exploring the effects of the availability of food on the brown lemming population and on the behavior of arctic birds. He also contributed to the classification of jays and documented the behavior of acorn woodpeckers and hummingbirds.

He published his findings in more than 200 scholarly papers, in the process helping define the field ' s major questions and lines of investigation.

" He trained virtually the entire branch of behavioral ecology, " said Paul W. Sherman, a professor of animal behavior at Cornell.

Dr. Pitelka was awarded the American Ornithologists ' Union ' s highest honor, the Brewster Medal, in 1980, and the Eminent Ecologist Award in 1992 from the Ecological Society of America.

Frank Alois Pitelka was born in Chicago and received his bachelor ' s degree from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. from Berkeley. Shortly afterward, he joined the university ' s zoology department.

Although he retired from teaching in 1985, he continued in his role overseeing the Hastings Natural History Reservation in Northern California ' s Carmel Valley, an ecological study site run by the university ' s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, until 1997.

He is survived by his sons Louis, of Frostburg, Md., and Vince, of Cookeville, Tenn.; his daughter, Kazi Pitelka; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His wife, Dorothy, also a professor of zoology at Berkeley, died in 1994.