David Albert Wardle - Curriculum Vitae#
Academic qualifications:
- 1989 PhD in Soil Ecology, University of Calgary, Canada
- 1985 BSc (First class honors) in Botany, University of Canterbury, N.Z.
Current affiliations:
- Smithsonian Professor of Forest Ecology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2017-)
- Adjunct Professor (20% of time). Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden (2017-)
- Research Associate, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (2017-)
- Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2001-)
- Research Associate, Landcare Research, New Zealand (2006-)
Most Recent Academic Awards:
- 2020 Recipient of the annual R. H. Whittaker ‘Distinguished Ecologist’ award from the Ecological Society of America, awarded to one ecologist each year.
- 2018 Recipient of 2018 ‘Eminent Ecologist’ award from the Journal of Ecology, awarded to one ecologist each year.
David Wardle’s research explores the links between aboveground and belowground communities, and how these in turn drive the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Much of this work is field based and in natural ecosystems, including in forested ecosystems around the world as well as subarctic and subalpine tundra. He is credited with some of the very first studies recognizing how aboveground-belowground biotic linkages drive ecosystem functioning, how biodiversity loss in real ecosystems affects ecological processes, and the ecosystem-wide impacts of invasive biota; much of this work is very heavily cited (total citations >72000, h-index = 108). He has authored two books on aboveground-belowground linkages (published by Princeton Univ Press and Oxford Univ Press), and around 350 peer-reviewed journal articles of which around 30 have appeared in Science and Nature (most as first or last author). Further, he has supervised a very diverse assortment of >50 postdoctoral researchers and PhD students, most of which hold academic or research positions in 16 separate countries.
