Alan Holyoak earned BS and MS degrees in Zoology with an emphasis in Aquatic Biology at Brigham Young University and a PhD in Biology from the University of California Santa Cruz. His areas of professional expertise include invertebrate zoology, marine biology, limnology, ecology, evolution and environmental science. He is also a biological illustrator. In addition to his campus-based courses, Alan Holyoak taught field courses in marine ecology and/or carried out research at the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the Univ. of Washington, The Long Marine Laboratory of UC Santa Cruz, Hopkins Marine Biological Station of Stanford University, the University of Hawaii and the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology of the University of Oregon. During his 30-year career as a college and university professor, Alan Holyoak watched the cost of textbooks and laboratory manuals skyrocket out of control. As a result, he produced laboratory materials for his own courses. Then, when he discovered Amazon's self-publishing platform, he used these exercises to produce laboratory manuals that he could make available to instructors and students looking for affordable alternatives to pricey lab manuals offered by commercial textbook companies.
