Athens, Ga. – Thomas W. Schoener, a Distinguished Professor in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis, will deliver the 27th Eugene P. Odum Lecture at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology on March 27. The lecture will be held at 4 p.m. in the ecology building’s auditorium and is free and open to the public.
Schoener’s talk on “Evolution + Ecology = EvoEco: The Interplay of Evolutionary and Ecological Dynamics” will explore a new approach to understanding the relationship between evolution and ecology.
Schoener works in the department of evolution and ecology and Center for Population Biology. His research includes population interactions, feeding strategies, island ecology, lizard ecology, spider ecology, predation, resource partitioning and food webs. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1984.
Among Schoener’s honors and awards are the Henry S. Fitch Award from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and the Robert H. MacArthur Award from the Ecological Society of America. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Oecologia and Ecology Letters and authored or co-authored numerous books on lizard ecology and other topics.
“Tom Schoener is a pioneer in synthetic approaches to ecology—physiology, ecosystems, evolution, communities, populations—[which] all play a critical role in the approaches Tom has taken to major ecological problems,” said John Gittleman, dean of the Odum School. “It is an honor to have Tom Schoener give the Odum Lecture.”
Honoring the founder of the Odum School, the annual Eugene P. Odum Lecture Series features speakers who address significant ecological questions in broad social and intellectual contexts. The 26 previous Odum lectures have been delivered by preeminent scholars including ecologist Stephen Pacala, biologists Gretchen Daily and Jim Brown, botanist Peter Raven, conservation ecologist Thomas Lovejoy and then-director of the National Science Foundation Rita Colwell.
The Odum Lecture is supported in part with funding from the Eugene P. and William E. Odum Endowment along with contributors Terry L. and Gary W. Barrett.
