Rodolfo Dirzo

Rodolfo Dirzo is a professor, conservationist, and tropical ecologist. He is a Bing Professor in environmental science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. His research interests mainly focus on plant-animal interactions, evolutionary ecology, and defaunation in the tropics of Latin America, Africa, and the Central Pacific. He was a member of the Committee on A Conceptual Framework for New K-12 Science Education Standards, co-authoring the framework in 2012, and continues to educate local communities and young people about science and environmental issues.

Early life and education Dirzo was born in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 1972, where he did thesis work on vegetation mapping of a watershed north of Mexico City. After receiving his bachelor's degree, Dirzo worked in the lab of Professor José Sarukhán, a renowned tropical ecologist, at UNAM for a few years. He used this reserve and research station to continue his work on herbivory patterns. He found that in Montes Azules, where human encroachment was not impacting the area as it was in Los Tuxtlas, there were blatant signs of mammalian herbivory. Currently, Dirzo is “conducting a review analysis to assess the consistency of differential defaunation across the globe”. When visiting his field sites in other countries, he also seeks to teach the local communities, especially children, about the importance of the region's biodiversity and environmental stewardship. 2015 - Medal of Honor (Science), State Congress, Morelos, Mexico 2015 - Merit in Ecology Medal, Ecological Society of Mexico 2016 - Miriam Arnold Rollan Prize for Volunteer Service, Stanford University 2017 - Medal for Merit in Research and Education, International Association for Tropical Biology 2017 - President Miguel Aleman Medal for Outstanding Work in Ecology and Environmental Problems, Mexico City 2017 - Medal Alfonso L. Herrera: Distinguished Scientist, Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, Mexico, Mexico City 2023 - BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.

Select publications Below are just a few of the 160+ papers written and co-written by Dirzo:

Dirzo, R. & Harper, J.L. 1982. Ditto. IV. The performance of cyanogenic and acyanogenic plants of Trifolium repens in the field. Journal of Ecology 70: 119-128 Dirzo, R. 1987. Estudios sobre interacciones planta-herbívoro en “Los Tuxtlas”, Veracruz. Revista de Biología Tropical 36: 119–132 Dirzo, R. & Miranda, A. 1990. Contemporary neotropical defaunation and forest structure, function and diversity: a sequel to John Terborgh. Conservation Biology 4: 444-447 Dirzo, R. & Raven, P.H. 1994. Un inventario biológico para México. Boletín de la Sociedad Botánica de México. 55:29-34 Dirzo, R, & P. H. Raven. 2003. Global biodiversity and loss. Annual Review of Environment and Natural Resources. 28: 137-167 Wright, S.J., Stoner, K.E., Beckman, N., Corlett, R.T., Dirzo, R., Muller-Landau, H,C., Nunez-Iturri, G., Peres, C.A., & Wang, B.C. 2007. The plight of large animals in tropical forests and the consequences for plant regeneration. Biotropica 39:289-291 Young, H.S., McCauley, D., Helgen, K.M., Goheen, J.R., Otárola-Castillo, E., Palmer, T.D., Pringle, R.M., Young, T.M., & Dirzo, R. 2013. Effects of mammalian herbivore declines on plant communities: observations and experiments in an African savannah. Journal of Ecology 101: 1030-1041 Galetti, M. & Dirzo, R. 2013. Ecological and evolutionary consequences of living in a defaunated world. Biological Conservation 163: 1–6. 117 Young, H., McCauley, D., & Dirzo, R. 2013. Context-dependent effects of large wildlife declines on small mammal communities in Central Kenya. Ecological Applications, 25: 348-360 Young, H.S., Dirzo, R., Helgen, K.M., McCauley, D.J., Billeter, S. Kosoy, M. Osikowicz, L., Salkeld, D., Young, T.P., Dittmar, K. 2014. Declines in large wildlife increase landscape-level prevalence of a rodent-borne disease in Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1404958111 Dirzo, R., Young, H.S., Balle, C., Galetti, M. 2014. Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science 345: 401-406. Ceballos, G., Ehrlich, P., Dirzo, R. 2017. Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US, doi/10.1073/pnas.1704949114