UGA faculty member Alan Covich and alumnus Marcelo Ardon were recognized for outstanding contributions to ecology at the centennial annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Baltimore.
A professor in the university’s Odum School of Ecology, Covich was awarded the ESA Distinguished Service Citation in recognition of his more than 40 years of volunteer service to ESA and the scientific community at large.
A past president of ESA from 2006-2007, Covich also served as president of the North American Benthological Society, now called the Society for Freshwater Science, in 1996, the American Institute of Biological Science in 2000 and the International Association for Ecology, known as INTECOL, from 2009 to 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1999 and was named an inaugural ESA Fellow in 2012.
His research interests include the impacts of natural and human disturbances on tropical stream food webs and the impacts of drought on food webs in the Flint River in Georgia.
Covich was director of the UGA Institute of Ecology, the forerunner of the Odum School of Ecology, from 2003 to 2007.
Ardon was a recipient of the George Mercer Award, given in honor of an outstanding research paper by a young scientist. He was lead author of “Drought-induced saltwater incursion leads to increased wetland nitrogen export,” published in Global Change Biology. Ardon, who received his doctorate in ecology from UGA in 2006, is an assistant professor in the biology department at East Carolina University. His research focuses on wetlands and streams, ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry in the context of land use and climate change.
Founded in 1915, the Ecological Society of America is the largest professional society for ecologists in the world, with more than 10,000 members.