Dr. Marston Bates (July 23, 1906 – April 3, 1974) was an American zoologist. Bates studies on mosquitoes contributed to the understanding of the epidemiology of yellow fever in northern South America, and he was the author of many popular science books. He was married to Nancy Bell Fairchild, daughter of the botanist David Fairchild; thus he married into the Fairchild family, descendants of Thomas Fairchild of Stratford, Connecticut.
In 1960, he published The Forest and the Sea, a hugely influential book on the then-new science of ecology.