James Brown (ecologist)

James Hemphill Brown (born 1942) is an American biologist and academic.

He is an ecologist, and as of 2004 a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico. His work has focused on two distinct aspects of ecology: the population and community ecology of rodents and harvester ants in the Chihuahuan Desert and large-scale questions relating to the distribution of body size, abundance and geographic range of animals, leading to the development of the field of macroecology, a term that was coined in a paper Brown co-authored with Brian Maurer of Michigan State University.

Education and honors

• Bachelor of Arts, Zoology, 1963, Cornell University

• Ph.D., Zoology, 1967, University of Michigan

• American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow, 1988

• Member of the National Academy of Sciences

• Robert H. MacArthur Award (Ecological Society of America)

Trained graduate students and post-docs

John F. Addicott, Andrew P. Allen, Susan Anderson, Kristina Anderson-Teixeira, Ford Ballantyne, Alison Boyer, Michael Bowers, Gregory S. Byers, Jason Bragg, Jean-Luc Cartron, Gerardo Ceballos, Michael Cyr, Diane Davidson, Brian J. Enquist *Metabolic theory of ecology, Kristine Ernest, S.K. Morgan Ernest, Katrin Bohning-Gaese, William Gannon, Laura Gonalez-Guzman, Thomas Gibson, James Gillooly, Deborah Goldberg, Jacob Goheen, Qinfeng Guo, Alan Harvey, Lauraine Hawkins, Robert Holmes, Richard Inouye, Dawn M. Kaufman, Douglas Kelt, S.Kathleen Lyons, Katrina Mangin, Pablo Marquet*macroecology, Brian Maurer *macroecology, David Mehlman, Shahroukh Mistry, Jordan Okie Jennifer Parody, Colleen Kelly, Jim Reichman*NCEAS, Michael Rourke, Dov Sax, Andrew Smith, Felisa Smith, Ursula Shepherd, Marian Skupski, Steven Sutherland, Robert Taylor, Katherine Thibault, Daniel Thompson, Hira Walker, Ethan P. White, Thomas Whitham, David Wright,

Portal

In 1977 Brown, in collaboration with Diane Davidson and James Reichman, started a research project in the Chihuahuan desert near Portal, AZ to study competition between rodents and ants and their influence on the annual plant community.^[1]

Publications

• Brown, J.H. and A.C. Gibson. 1983. Biogeography. Mosby, St. Louis, MO.
• Real, L., and J. H. Brown, eds. 1991. Foundations of Ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
• Genoways, H.H., and J.H. Brown, eds. 1993. Biology of the Heteromyidae. Special Publication No. 10, American Society of Mammalogists.
• Brown, J.H. 1995. Macroecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
• Brown, J.H. and M.V. Lomolino. 1998. Biogeography (2nd edition). Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.
• Brown, J.H., and G.B. West, eds. 2000. Scaling in Biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Lomolino, M.V., D.F. Sax, and J.H. Brown, eds. 2004. Foundations of Biogeography. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
• Lomolino, M.V., B.R. Riddle, and J.H. Brown. 2005. Biogeography (3rd edition). Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.

See also

• Metabolic theory of ecology

References

External links

• "New York Times" article about Dr. Brown's work on biological scaling
• Home Page
• "Dr. Brown's work on the origin of biological scaling laws featured on PBS NOVA special 'Hunting the Hidden Dimension'