Robin Bradford Foster

Biography Foster graduated from Dartmouth College in 1966 with a Bachelor of Science in biology, and attained his Botany / Plant Ecology PhD in 1974 at Duke University under ecologist Dwight Billings. In 1979, while at the University of Chicago, work on Barro Colorado Island with frequent coauthor Stephen P. Hubbell contributed to the development of the first tropical forest dynamics plot, leading to a global network of 18 such parcels. The "audacious" plan was to periodically map and measure every tree within . During his extensive fieldwork in Peru, he contracted both malaria and hepatitis. He has taught biology at the University of Chicago and served as a staff biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. In 2013, Foster was elected an honorary fellow of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC).

Selected publications