James A. Drake (ecologist)

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James A. Drake
Born1954 (age 7071)
Wisconsin, U.S.
OccupationCommunity ecologist
Known forCommunity Ecology Assembly Models
Notable workBiological Invasions

James A. Drake (born 1954) is an American ecologist.

Contents

Early life and education

Drake was born on August 20, 1954. He went to Wausau West High School and then to the University of Wisconsin in Madison and graduated with a degree in science education. He later graduated from Purdue in 1985 and became an Andrew Mellon Fellow at Stanford working on Biological Invasions with Harold Mooney. In 1986, he began teaching at The University of Tennessee as an assistant professor in zoology and the ecology graduate program. He was a founding member of their Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Career

Drake focused on community assembly models and the structure of ecological communities. He helped organize The International Program of the Scientific Committee on Problems with the Environment. This work led to the formation of the scientific study of invasion biology. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal Biological Invasions from 2003 to 2008 and edited two major texts from some of the earliest works regarding community ecology at the time Ecology of Biological Invasions of Hawaii and North America (1986) and Biological Invasions: A Global Perspective (1989). [1] His work is considered as influential work regarding Community Ecology. [2] Some of his students later determined the simultaneous convergence and divergence at different levels of community assembly. [3] Some of his work included sequential and spatial constraints to illustrate the principles of population ecology. His theoretical constructs were later used to describe microbial ecological communities. His most influential work involves emerging complex systems, food webs, and biological invasions.

Works

Books

Most-cited Peer-reviewed journal articles

References

  1. "Founding EEB Department Member Jim Drake Retires". Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, College of Arts & Sciences. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. November 3, 2016.
  2. Drake, James A. (1991). "Community-assembly mechanics and the structure of an experimental species ensemble". American Naturalist. 137 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1086/285143. ISSN   0003-0147. JSTOR   2462154. S2CID   53478943.
  3. Fukami, Tadashi; Martijn Bezemer, T.; Mortimer, Simon R.; van der Putten, Wim H. (December 1, 2005). "Species divergence and trait convergence in experimental plant community assembly" (PDF). Ecology Letters. 8 (12): 1283–1290. Bibcode:2005EcolL...8.1283F. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00829.x. ISSN   1461-0248. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 3, 2016. Retrieved September 29, 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Articles. Google Scholar Author page. Retrieved September 29, 2021.