Dr Robert E. Ricklefs is an American ornithologist and ecologist. He is the Curators' Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Born in 1943, he graduated with an AB from Stanford University in 1963 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. He completed a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute before taking up a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania. He was the 1982 recipient of the American Ornithologists' Union's William Brewster Memorial Award, the union's most prestigious award given annually for an exceptional body of work on birds of the Western Hemisphere. In 2003, he received the Pacific Seabird Group's Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on growth and development in seabirds.[1] He was the 2006 recipient of the Cooper Ornithological Society’s Loye and Alden Miller Research Award, which is given in recognition of lifetime achievement in ornithological research.[2]
During his career he has made major contributions to the island biogeography, including testing E. O. Wilson's Taxon Cycle Concept.[3] His most-cited scientific paper examined ecological communities.[4] Recent work has sought to rescale the concept of an ecological community.[5] His textbook "Ecology" was first published in 1973.
Dr. Ricklefs was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences April 28, 2009.[6]
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, 1968-1972
Associate Professor, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, 1972-1978
Professor, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, 1978-1995
Curators’ Professor, Department of Biology, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 1995-.[7]