Robert Knight Colwell (born October 9, 1943) is an American evolutionary ecologist, biogeographer, and biodiversity scientist. He is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut and is known for contributions to biodiversity statistics, macroecology, and biogeographical theory.[1][2]
Colwell was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011[3] and has been recognized for his sustained citation impact across multiple fields of ecology and biogeography.[4]
Early life and education
Colwell was born in Denver, Colorado and graduated from Harvard in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts.[5] During his undergraduate years and shortly thereafter, he worked as a curatorial assistant in ethnobotany under Richard Evans Schultes at Harvard.[6]
He received his Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Michigan in 1969 under the supervision of Lawrence B. Slobodkin. His doctoral dissertation examined ecological specialization and species diversity in tropical and temperate arthropods.[6]
Academic career
Colwell served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley from 1970 to 1989. In 1989, he joined the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, where he was appointed Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in 2001.[1] After retiring from teaching in 2014, he became Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at UConn. He has also held international and adjunct appointments, including at the University of Copenhagen, the Universidade Federal de Goiás, the University of the Sunshine Coast,[7] and Curator Adjoint of Entomology and Zoology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.[2][8]
Research and contributions
Colwell's research spans biogeography, macroecology, community ecology, tropical biology, and biodiversity informatics.[9] He is a co-developer of the mid-domain effect, a theoretical framework addressing geometric constraints on patterns of species richness within bounded geographical domains.[10]
He has contributed extensively to statistical approaches for estimating species richness from incomplete ecological samples. His software package EstimateS has been widely adopted in ecological research and cited in thousands of scientific publications.[11][12]
In 2008, Colwell and collaborators published a study in Science examining projected elevational range shifts of tropical species under climate warming, introducing the concept of lowland biotic attrition.[13]
His research on hummingbird flower mites has demonstrated coevolution between plants, pollinators, and their associated arthropods.[14]
Public engagement
Colwell has contributed to public discussions on biodiversity and climate change through media interviews and science communication platforms. He has appeared on NPR's Science Friday discussing tropical biodiversity and climate-driven range shifts[15] and has written for The Conversation on ecological and environmental topics.[7]
Honors and recognition
Colwell has served as President of the American Society of Naturalists and Vice President of the Ecological Society of America.[3] He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the California Academy of Sciences, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, the Ecological Society of America, and the American Society of Naturalists.[2][16]
Personal life
Colwell is married to Robin L. Chazdon, a tropical ecologist and professor at the University of Connecticut who specializes in forest regeneration and restoration ecology.[6]
Selected publications
Gotelli, Nicholas J.; Colwell, Robert K. (2001). "Quantifying biodiversity: procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness". Ecology Letters. 4 (4): 379–391. doi:10.1046/j.1461-0248.2001.00230.x.
Colwell, Robert K.; Coddington, Jonathan A. (1994). "Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 345: 101–118. doi:10.1098/rstb.1994.0091.
Chao, Anne; Gotelli, Nicholas J.; Hsieh, T. C.; Sander, Elizabeth L.; Ma, K. H.; Colwell, Robert K.; Ellison, Aaron M. (2014). "Rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers: a framework for sampling and estimation in species diversity studies". Ecological Monographs. 84 (1): 45–67. doi:10.1890/13-0133.1.
Colwell, Robert K.; Brehm, Gunnar; Cardelús, Catherine L.; Gilman, Alex C.; Longino, John T. (2008). "Global warming, elevational range shifts, and lowland biotic attrition in the wet tropics". Science. 322 (5899): 258–261. doi:10.1126/science.1162547. PMID18845754.
Colwell, Robert K.; Lees, David C. (2000). "The mid-domain effect: geometric constraints on the geography of species richness". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 15 (2): 70–76. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347(99)01767-X.
Colwell, Robert K.; Elsensohn, Jonah E. (2014). "EstimateS turns 20: statistical estimation of species richness and shared species from samples, with non-parametric extrapolation". Ecography. 37 (6): 609–613. doi:10.1111/ecog.00814.
↑Colwell, Robert K.; Elsensohn, Jonah E. (2014). "EstimateS turns 20: statistical estimation of species richness and shared species from samples, with non-parametric extrapolation". Ecography. 37 (6): 609–613. doi:10.1111/ecog.00814.[self-published source?]
↑Colwell, Robert K.; Brehm, Gunnar; Cardelús, Catherine L.; Gilman, Alex C.; Longino, John T. (2008). "Global warming, elevational range shifts, and lowland biotic attrition in the wet tropics". Science. 322 (5899): 258–261. doi:10.1126/science.1162547. PMID18845754.[self-published source?]
↑Colwell, Robert K. (1989). "Hummingbirds of the Juan Fernández Islands: natural history, evolution, and population status". Ibis. 131: 548–566.[self-published source?]
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