John Vandermeer

Last updated
John Vandermeer
Born1940 (age 8283)
NationalityAmerican
Education University of Illinois
University of Kansas
University of Michigan
Scientific career
Fields Ecology
Institutions University of Michigan
Thesis The Structure of Communities as Determined by Competitive Interactions: A Theoretical and Experimental Approach  (1968)

John Harry Vandermeer (born 1940) is an American ecologist, a mathematical ecologist, tropical ecologist and agroecologist. He is the Asa Gray Distinguished University Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1971. [1] His research focuses on the ecology of agricultural systems, and he has operated a plot of coffee plants in Mexico for his research for more than fifteen years. [2] [3] In 2016, the symposium "Science with Passion and a Moral Compass" was held to honor his career as a scientist and activist. The symposium, also known as VandyFest, was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan from May 6 to May 8. [4]

Contents

Early life and education

Vandermeer was born in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. [5] He was educated at the University of Illinois, the University of Kansas, and the University of Michigan. [6]

Vandermeer has conducted field research mainly in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua [7] and Guatemala. His research has focused on the dynamics of spatially explicit biological interactions in coffee farms in Mexico.

His long-term collaboration with a multi-national team of scientists focused on tropical rainforest dynamics after major hurricane disturbance in Nicaragua. [7] [8] Their research provides strong evidence in favor of the assertion that it is the chance to reach a recruitment space into the forest canopy that governs the maintenance of hundreds of tree species and to some lesser extent the multiple tree species competition for nutrients and light. [9] This diverges from tropical tree species niche identity notion thus proposing that the tree species assemblage are to some extent the result of random dispersal and recruitment events. [10]

Vandermeer and his colleagues Dr. Ivette Perfecto, Dr. Douglas Boucher and Dr. Inigo Granzow de la Cerda contributed to the groundwork that evolved into the university system in the Autonomous Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tropical rainforest</span> Forest in areas with heavy rainfall in the tropics

Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as lowland equatorial evergreen rainforest. True rainforests are typically found between 10 degrees north and south of the equator ; they are a sub-set of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28-degree latitudes. Within the World Wildlife Fund's biome classification, tropical rainforests are a type of tropical moist broadleaf forest that also includes the more extensive seasonal tropical forests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel H. Janzen</span>

Daniel Hunt Janzen is an American evolutionary ecologist, and conservationist. He divides his time between his professorship in biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the DiMaura Professor of Conservation Biology, and his research and field work in Costa Rica.

Canopy research is the field of scientific research based upon data collected in the canopy of trees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fire ecology</span> Study of fire in ecosystems

Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with the effects of fire on natural ecosystems. Many ecosystems, particularly prairie, savanna, chaparral and coniferous forests, have evolved with fire as an essential contributor to habitat vitality and renewal. Many plant species in fire-affected environments use fire to germinate, establish, or to reproduce. Wildfire suppression not only endangers these species, but also the animals that depend upon them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intermediate disturbance hypothesis</span> Model proposing regional biodiversity is increased by a moderate level of ecological disturbance

The intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH) suggests that local species diversity is maximized when ecological disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent. At low levels of disturbance, more competitive organisms will push subordinate species to extinction and dominate the ecosystem. At high levels of disturbance, due to frequent forest fires or human impacts like deforestation, all species are at risk of going extinct. According to IDH theory, at intermediate levels of disturbance, diversity is thus maximized because species that thrive at both early and late successional stages can coexist. IDH is a nonequilibrium model used to describe the relationship between disturbance and species diversity. IDH is based on the following premises: First, ecological disturbances have major effects on species richness within the area of disturbance. Second, interspecific competition results in one species driving a competitor to extinction and becoming dominant in the ecosystem. Third, moderate ecological scale disturbances prevent interspecific competition.

Stephen P. Hubbell is an American ecologist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of the unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography (UNTB), which seeks to explain the diversity and relative abundance of species in ecological communities not by niche differences but by stochastic processes among ecologically equivalent species. Hubbell is also a senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama. He is also well known for tropical forest studies. In 1980, he and Robin B. Foster of the Field Museum in Chicago, launched the first of the 50 hectare forest dynamics studies on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. This plot became the flagship of a global network of large permanent forest dynamics plots, all following identical measurement protocols. This global network now has more than 70 plots in 28 countries, and these plots contain more than 12000 tree species and 7 million individual trees that are tagged, mapped, and monitored long-term for growth, survival and recruitment. The Center for Tropical Forest Science coordinates research across global network of plots through the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The program has expanded into the temperate zone, and is now known as the Forest Global Earth Observatory Network or ForestGEO.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lambir Hills National Park</span> National park in Malaysia

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In the context of ecological stability, resistance is the property of communities or populations to remain "essentially unchanged" when subject to disturbance. The inverse of resistance is sensitivity.

Monica G. Turner is an American ecologist known for her work at Yellowstone National Park since the large fires of 1988. She is currently the Eugene P. Odum Professor of Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William F. Laurance</span> American conservationist

William F. Laurance, also known as Bill Laurance, is Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University, Australia and has been elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He has received an Australian Laureate Fellowship from the Australian Research Council. He held the Prince Bernhard Chair for International Nature Conservation at Utrecht University, Netherlands from 2010 to 2014.

Phyllis Dewing Coley is a Biology professor currently teaching at the University of Utah. In 1996 she received the University's Distinguished Research Award. She has been a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute since 1995. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Thomas Thorstein Veblen is an American forest ecologist and physical geographer known for his work on the ecology of Nothofagus forests in the Southern Hemisphere and on the ecology of conifer forests in the southern Rocky Mountains of the U.S.A. He is an Arts and Sciences College Professor of Distinction at University of Colorado at Boulder, USA (2006).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie-Josée Fortin</span> Canadian biologist

Marie-Josée Fortin is an ecologist and Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Fortin holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Spatial Ecology at the University of Toronto. In 2016, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Julie Sloan Denslow is an American botanist, ecologist and biologist. She grew up in South Florida, and always loved nature. She graduated from Coral Gables Senior High School in 1960. She has contributed to the field of ecology through her work with and research of tropical ecosystems. Earlier in her career, she spent significant time in the field in tropical locations such as Costa Rica and Panama, as well as in temperate locations in Louisiana. and later on in her career she worked more in the office and classroom, but still spent the occasional day in the field. She has focused on research involving the ecology of exotic invasive plant species, and on ecosystem reactions and recovery following disturbances. Denslow is also a strong supporter of gender equality in the natural sciences, pushing for equal representation of women involved in tropical research and leadership during a 2007 Gender Committee Meeting within the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC). Her most notable contribution to tropical research is her paper "Gap Partitioning among Tropical Rainforest Trees", published in 1980.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivette Perfecto</span> Puerto Rican ecologist

Ivette Perfecto is an ecologist and professor at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on complex ecosystem dynamics and the application of ecological theories to agricultural systems.

María Uriarte is an ecologist who specializes in the processes that drive tropical forest dynamics, especially after extreme weather events. She is currently a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Science at Columbia University and serves as adjunct faculty in the Department of Ecology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She conducts research primarily in Puerto Rico and Brazil and is associated with the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE) tropics and ForestGeo research groups.

Grizelle González is a soil ecologist working for the United States Forest Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is known for her work on soil ecology, nutrient cycling, and ecosystem ecology at the Sabana Field Research Station in Puerto Rico.

Liza Sheera Comita is an American ecologist and Professor of Tropical Forest Ecology in the School of the Environment at Yale University. Her research focuses on tropical tree species ecology and how spatial and temporal variation in early life-stages affects abundance and diversity of species in tropical forests.

Oliver Lawrence Phillips, is a British ecologist who specializes in tropical forests and is currently Professor of Tropical Ecology in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. He is noted for his work coordinating large-scale, collaborative research projects that study how humans have changed the world's tropical forests, and the implications for climate change.

Stacy Philpott is an American ecologist who is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research considers agroecology and the conservation of biodiversity. She was elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America in 2021.

References

  1. "John Vandermeer". U-M LSA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB). University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts . Retrieved 2018-12-02.
  2. Schramm, Michael (2015-08-13). "Getting in the know: The real danger with GMOs". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2018-12-02.
  3. "Modern growing methods may be culprit of 'coffee rust' fungal outbreak". University of Michigan News. 2013-02-12. Retrieved 2018-12-02.
  4. "Home". Science with Passion and a Moral Compass. University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Retrieved 2018-12-02.
  5. Vandermeer, John H. (2002-12-03). Tropical Agroecosystems. CRC Press. ISBN   9781420039887.
  6. Regents, University of Michigan Board of (1966). Proceedings of the Board of Regents. University of Michigan. p. 1626.
  7. 1 2 Boucher, D (1990). "Growing back after hurricanes: Catastrophes may be critical to rain forest dynamics". BioScience. 40: 163–166. doi:10.2307/1311359. JSTOR   1311359.
  8. Vandermeer, J.; Granzow de la Cerda, I; Perfecto, I; Boucher, D; Ruiz, J (2004). "Multiple basins of attraction in a tropical forest: Evidence for nonequilibrium community structure". Ecology. 85 (2): 575–579. doi:10.1890/02-3140. hdl: 2027.42/116998 .
  9. Vandermeer, John H.; Boucher, D.; Granzow de la Cerda, I.; Perfecto, I.; Ruiz, J. (2000). "Hurricanes and tropical species diversity". Science. 290 (5492): 788–791. doi:10.1126/science.290.5492.788. PMID   11052939.
  10. Ruiz, J; Vandermeer, J; Granzow de la Cerda, I (2010). "Growth and mortality patterns in a thinning canopy of post hurricane regenerating rain forest in Eastern Nicaragua (1990 – 2005)". Revista de Biología Tropical. 58 (4): 1283–1297. PMID   21246992.
  11. Ruiz, J; Vandermeer, J; Granzow de la Cerda, I; Perfecto, I; Boucher, D (2013). "Regeneración de los Bosques huracanados de Nicaragua (1988-2007)". Wani. 52: 6–16.