Robert Eric Ricklefs (born June 6, 1943) is an American ornithologist and ecologist. He was the Curators' Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis from 1996 until August 2019.

Education

Born in 1943, he grew up near Monterey, California, where his interest in biology was fostered by a teacher. He graduated with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

from Stanford University in 1963 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. His doctoral advisor was originally Robert H. MacArthur (prior to his move to Princeton University), but he finished his dissertation under W. John Smith. During his PhD, he studied avian growth and development, which he continued for much of his career. He completed a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama before taking up a faculty position at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

. He was the 1982 recipient of the

American Ornithologists' Union The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its ...

's William Brewster Memorial Award, the union's most prestigious award given annually for an exceptional body of work on birds of the Western Hemisphere. In 2003, he received the Pacific Seabird Group's Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on growth and development in seabirds.Pacific Seabirds Vol. 30
/ref> He was awarded the 2003 Margaret Morse Nice Medal by the Wilson Ornithological Society. He was the 2006 recipient of the Cooper Ornithological Society’s Loye and Alden Miller Research Award, which is given in recognition of lifetime achievement in ornithological research.COS: Miller Awards

Research

During his career, he has made major contributions to the

island biogeography Insular biogeography or island biogeography is a field within biogeography that examines the factors that affect the species richness and diversification of isolated natural communities. The theory was originally developed to explain the pattern ...

, including testing E. O. Wilson's Taxon Cycle Concept, His most-cited scientific paper examined ecological communities. Recent work has sought to rescale the concept of an ecological community. He has made major contributions to life-history theory of birds, avian growth and development, tropical ecology, and avian disease research. His original method for avian growth rate estimation continues to be used today though modifications have been proposed. His textbook ''Ecology,'' first published in 1973, continues to be updated and used in university courses. He has also published ''The Economy of Nature', Avian Growth and Development: Evolution Within the Altricial-precocial Spectrum'' and ''Aging, A Natural History.''

Awards

* 1982: William Brewster Memorial Award, American Ornithologists' Union * 2003: Lifetime Achievement Award, Pacific Seabird Group * 2003: Margaret Morse Nice Medal, Wilson Ornithological Society * 2005:

Sewall Wright Award ASN Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Conceptual Unification of the Biological Sciences, previously known as the Sewall Wright Award, is given annually by the American Society of Naturalists to a "senior-level" and active investigator mak ...

American Society of Naturalists The American Society of Naturalists (ASN) was founded in 1883 and is one of the oldest professional societies dedicated to the biological sciences in North America. The purpose of the Society is "to advance and diffuse knowledge of organic evoluti ...

* 2006: Love and Alden Miller Research Award, Cooper Ornithological Society * 2009: Inducted member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

April 28, 2009. * 2010: Honorary doctorate from Aarhus University, Denmark * 2010: Honorary doctorate from the University of Burgundy, France * 2010: Honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) * 2011: Alfred Wallace Award, The International Biogeography Society * 2015: Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology * 2017: Honorary Lifetime Membership Award, American Society of Naturalists * 2018: Honorary degree from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

Career

*Assistant Professor, Department of Biology,

, 1968-1972 *Associate Professor, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, 1972-1978 *Professor, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, 1978-1995 *Curators’ Professor, Department of Biology, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 1995-2019.

Personal life

Ricklefs is married to the botanist Susanne Renner.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ricklefs, Robert American ornithologists American ecologists Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 1943 births Winners of the Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology Fellows of the Ecological Society of America Presidents of the American Society of Naturalists