G. David Tilman

G. David Tilman (originally Titman, born July 22, 1949 in Aurora, Illinois) is an American environmentalist and winner of the International Prize for Biology 2008 Tilman earned his Ph.D. title in 1976 at the University of Michigan.. He is a professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in Ecology at the University of Minnesota and professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, microbiology and behavioral biology. He is director of the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve for long-term studies of ecology. Tilman was a Guggenheim Fellow, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Science.

Resource competition and community structure

Tilman was known for his work on competition in plant communities in relation to biodiversity and their ecosystem functions. 1994 caught an article in Nature titled Biodiversity and stability in grasslands. In it, he presents data from a 1982 experiment started with about 200 plots on a grassy area at the Cedar Creek Natural History Area in Minnesota. Each of the plots was examined 20 years on the factors biodiversity and biomass in relation to the plant community. Tilmans Article published data on the development before and after a drought period in 1988, had the astonishing impact on the plot. The drought had a while as an existential disturbance from, but the biomass data show a positive correlation between species diversity within a plant community and the stability of society as a whole; these results support the diversity -stability hypothesis empirically.

Writings

• David Tilman: Resource Competition and Community Structure. Monographs in Population Biology, Princeton University Press 1982
• David Tilman: Plant Strategies and the Dynamics and Structure of Plant Communities. Monographs in Population Biology, Princeton University Press 1982.
• Grace, David Tilman (ed.): Perspectives in Plant Competition. Academic Press, New York 1990.
• David Tilman, Kariev (ed.): Spatial Ecology: The Role of Space in Population Dynamics and Inter- Specific Interactions. Monographs in Population Biology, Princeton University Press.
• AP Kinzig, SW Pacala, D. Tilman: Functional Consequences of Biodiversity: Empirical Progress and Theoretical Extensions. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2002.