by Kati Moore (MEM ‘ 16)? Nicholas School Communications Student Assistant

DURHAM, N.C. – John W. Terborgh, research professor of environmental science at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and director of the Center for Tropical Conservation at Duke University, will present the 2014 Henry J. Oosting Memorial Lecture in Ecology at 4:30 p.m. Friday, April 10.

Terborgh’s talk, “Ecology’s Perennial Blind Spot: Species Diversity and the Trophic Cascade,” will be held in Love Auditorium at the Levine Science Research Center on Duke’s West Campus. It is free and open to the public.

A reception will precede the lecture at 3:30 p.m. in the Hall of Science, adjacent to Love Auditorium.

The Oosting Lecture, now in its 43rd year, is presented by Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, the University Program in Ecology and the Department of Biology.

An authority on tropical ecology and conservation issues, Terborgh is widely cited for his work on plant and animal interactions in neo-tropical forests.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and has served on the boards of several conservation organizations, including RARE, The Wildlands Project, Cultural Survival, The Digit Fund and the World Wildlife Fund.

Terborgh is the 1992 recipient of the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and the 1996 Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal of the National Academy of Sciences. He was elected Honorary Fellow of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation in 2005.  

From 1973 to 2011 he operated the Cocha Cashu Biological Station in Peru’s Manu National Park, where he oversaw the research of more than 100 researchers. After serving on the faculty of University of Maryland and Princeton University, he moved to Duke University in 1989 and founded the Duke University Center for Tropical Conservation.

###