Arthur Amerson, Jr. was born January 2, 1936 in Macon, Georgia to Arthur Binion Amerson, Sr. and Agnes Elizabeth Dunn. He graduated from Mercer University in Georgia 1958 with a degree in Biology. He then transferred to the University of Kansas and began to work towards a Master's degree with a specialization in acarology, the study of mites and ticks. In the summer of 1962, he spent two months in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico with a team of faculty and graduate students from KU on behalf of the Museum of Natural History. The field workers gathered large and varied collections of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, sampling vertebrate fauna ranging from southern evergreen forests to scrub forests and imtermediate habitats of the north. The group also covered the offshore islands Cozumel and Mujeres. Amerson's studies at KU were interrupted when he accepted a job from the Smithsonian Institution to study plants and animals of various Pacific islands. He spent 7 years on this study and eventually returned to KU to complete his Masters in Ecology and Environmental Studies. Arthur Binion Amerson, Jr. died September 23, 2017.