Our Board

Daniel Simberloff

Daniel is the Nancy Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies and director of the Institute for Biological Invasions at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Daniel is a biologist and ecologist who earned his PhD from Harvard University in 1969. He studied ecology as a student of the biologist EO Wilson, one of the coauthors of the theory of island biogeography. For his PhD dissertation, he was the first to test this theory experimentally in Floridian mangrove systems, producing studies such as the 1969 paper, “Experimental Zoogeography of Islands: The Colonization of Empty Islands,” which is considered a seminal paper. Daniel is very active on the issues of invasive species, studying the susceptibility of ecosystems to invasion from exotic species, the practical implications of these invasions, and the potential interactions between invasive species including the potential for invasional meltdown—in which the introduction of exotic species facilitates the establishment and invasion of other exotics. Daniel has received several awards, including the Eminent Ecologist Award in 2006 from the Ecological Society of America, and he has published books and more than 350 articles in scientific journals. He is a past president of the American Society of Naturalists and was a member of the National Science Board from 2000 until 2006.