Natural sciences
Natural sciences
Interviews
Content available in: English Updated May 2024

Understanding Plant Ecology

In this interview with zoologist Charles Godfray, David Tilman, 2014 Balzan Prize for Plant Ecology, talks about how biodiversity relates to different ecological and ecosystem functions, with reference to his field studies at Cedar Creek, Minnesota.

Charles Godfray: David was the winner of the Balzan Prize for Plant Ecology in 2014. Dave, throughout your career you’ve worked on very many things, but am I right that one of the themes that has run through your career is the relationship between biodiversity and different ecological and ecosystem functions?

David Tilman: Absolutely. Biological diversity – the ecological and genetic diversity within each ecosystem on earth – is one of the most unique features of life on earth, and it’s amazing that the world has come to have so many species. With human impacts threatening species with extinction, and causing extinctions at an unprecedented rate in the last century or so, a question arose twenty-five or thirty years ago: does it matter?

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Author

David Tilman

G. David Tilman is Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in Ecology at the University of Minnesota and Director of the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve. He is also Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Honorary Professor at the China Agricultural University in Beijing.

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Balzan Prize - 2014