Ecological Society of America announces recipients of 2025 awards

The Ecological Society of America is pleased to announce the winners of its 2025 awards, which recognize outstanding contributions to ecology in new discoveries, teaching, sustainability, diversity and lifelong commitment to the profession.

These awards are designed to not only reward past achievements, but also to inspire a broad audience of scientists, educators and students, opening the door to new insights and collaborations that will further the impact of ecological research.

ESA will present the 2025 awards during a ceremony at the Society’s upcoming Annual Meeting, which will take place in Baltimore, Maryland Aug. 10–15.

Learn more about ESA awards.

Eminent Ecologist Award
William H. Schlesinger, President Emeritus, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

The Eminent Ecologist Award honors a senior ecologist for an outstanding body of ecological work or sustained ecological contributions of extraordinary merit. This year’s Eminent Ecologist Award goes to renowned ecologist William H. Schlesinger.

Schlesinger’s work has profoundly advanced our understanding of global element cycles and their ecological dimensions by promoting a synthesis between ecology and other disciplines. He pioneered the integration of biogeochemistry into mainstream ecology and has been a steadfast advocate for science-informed policy, working extensively to communicate with decision-makers and the public.

As an early advocate for global-scale thinking, most of Schlesinger’s research focuses on soils and stored carbon. His empirical and theoretical work on the global carbon cycle encompasses all types of terrestrial ecosystems, including forests, grasslands, savannahs, deserts and wetlands. This resulted in a prolific publication record that includes highly cited works on desertification, carbon sequestration and ecological impacts of climate change. He has also developed global budgets summarizing the sources of atmospheric ammonia (a pollutant), the fate of human-derived nitrogen on land and the global cycles of elements like boron, lithium and arsenic.

In addition to his research, Schlesinger is a staunch advocate for science communication, and his career exemplifies a commitment to integrating high-caliber science with public engagement and science policy advocacy. His outreach initiatives such as the “EarthWise” radio spot and the “Citizen Scientist” blog show his talents in making connections across the breadth of ecological science and speaking to diverse audiences.

Schlesinger’s work has earned him many honors, including election as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Soil Science Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and ESA. He has mentored many students and scientists who now hold key roles in academia, national laboratories, government facilities and industry. With his guidance, research teams ask grand questions and take intellectual risks that push the boundaries of ecological understanding. And finally, his leadership roles, including serving as ESA President and contributing to significant scientific committees, underscore his legacy and impact on the ecological community.

Distinguished Service Citation
Carmen R. Cid, Dean of Arts and Sciences and Emerita Professor, Department of Biology, Eastern Connecticut State University

Carmen R. Cid is the recipient of the 2025 Distinguished Service Citation, which recognizes long and distinguished volunteer service to ESA, the scientific community and the larger purpose of ecology in the public welfare. As an active member of ESA for 45 years, Cid has co-created, implemented, and advised every ESA diversity and education initiative while creating strategic links to national diversity in ecology and higher education networks.

Cid is a Cuban-American forest and wetland ecologist who has dedicated her career to using her educational, research, administrative and fundraising talents to make ecology careers accessible and meaningful to all students. As a respected ecology educator and later the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Eastern Connecticut State University, she advocated for ecology education, promoting sustainability across the curriculum and career readiness initiatives to prepare graduates for the environmental workforce. Unwaveringly, she has been a leader in fostering opportunities to bring underrepresented students into the sciences.

In 1991, Cid was appointed the founding Chair of the ESA Women and Minorities in Ecology Committee, and also wrote significant portions of the first ESA strategic plan for diversity and education initiatives, including outlining the SEEDS program. As founding Chair of the current ESA Diversity Committee, she helped implement the first three years of the ESA Excellence in Ecology Scholars program, developing strategic guidelines for meeting the career development needs of ESA’s diverse members.

In addition to being an ESA Fellow since 2017, since 2020 Cid has been Co-PI to the Undergraduate Network for Increasing Diversity of Ecologists (UNIDE), linking ESA’s Four-Dimensional Ecology Education curricular framework — which she helped develop — to UNIDE’s culturally-responsive pedagogy efforts. Her ongoing service highlights the importance of ecological science and, by her example, the importance of ESA and its members in providing ecological information, grounded in excellent science, for the public benefit.

Eugene P. Odum Award for Excellence in Ecology Education
Luanna B. Prevost, Associate Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, University of South Florida

Odum Award recipients demonstrate their ability to relate basic ecological principles to human affairs through teaching, outreach and mentoring activities. This year’s Odum Award for Excellence in Ecology Education is presented to Luanna B. Prevost, an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida (USF).

Prevost’s research is focused on improving biology and ecology education through examining student conceptual understanding and faculty teaching practices. She has led several faculty professional development initiatives, including faculty mentoring networks and workshops on improving ecology education at the ESA Annual Meeting and other conferences. Prevost is committed to broadening participation in ecology and in STEM more broadly through her involvement with the UNIDE network, an NSF “Scholarship in STEM” (S-STEM) program at USF and the ESA SEEDS Program. Additionally, she leads opportunities for high school teacher and student participation in ecology and other sciences as Site Director of the Amgen Biotech Experience Tampa and through biodiversity field experiences.

Prevost has been at the forefront of ESA’s recent efforts to transform ecology education. She has served as a founding member and Chair of ESA’s 4DEE Subcommittee and as a member of the ESA Education Committee. Through her dedication and extensive work — including organizing conference sessions, publishing on assessment of student learning, leading community-engaged learning partnerships, and mentoring and teaching — she is an inspiring ecology educator who exemplifies all of the attributes expected of a recipient of the Odum Award.

Robert H. Whittaker Distinguished Ecologist Award
Monsterrat Vilà, Professor, Department of Conservation Biology and Global Change, Doñana Biological Station

The Whittaker Distinguished Ecologist award recognizes an ecologist with an earned doctorate and an outstanding record of contributions in ecology who is not a U.S. citizen and who resides outside the United States. The 2025 recipient of this award is Monsterrat Vilà, one of the most influential plant scientists in the field of invasion ecology, shaping our current understanding of invasive species impacts, risk assessment and the influence of climate change in driving invasions worldwide.

Vilà completed her postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley where she became fascinated by the ecology of invasive plant species. She has been working on biological invasions ever since, primarily focusing on their impacts on nature, ecosystem services and human well-being. Vilà’s research continues to advance our collective understanding of how invasive species disrupt native ecosystems and she has developed methods to create more accurate risk assessments for managing biological invasions, thereby enhancing global biodiversity conservation.

With more than 230 publications, 40 book chapters and more than 50,000 citations, Vilà’s extraordinary academic record is matched only by her service contributions. She has led NeoBiota — the European Working Group on Biological Invasions — for more than a decade, and has served in editorial roles at numerous journals, in addition to authoring Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) chapters. Vilà is also member of the Scientific Forum of the European Regulation on Alien Invasive Species and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Spanish National Research Council. She previously served on other panels at the European Research Council and at the Spanish Research Agency. Vilà’s efforts have been both enormous and critical for the advancement of invasion ecology.

Commitment to Human Diversity in Ecology Award
Nicole M. Colón Carrión, Program Associate, My Access to Network Opportunities (MANO) Project, Hispanic Access Foundation

The Commitment to Human Diversity in Ecology Award recognizes long-standing contributions of an individual toward increasing the diversity of future ecologists through mentoring, teaching or outreach. Nicole Colón Carrión is the winner of this year’s award in recognition of her dedication to developing future leaders in agricultural sciences, conservation and ecology.

A forest ecologist and plant pathologist, Colón Carrión conducted her graduate studies on the effects of climate change on plant-fungal interactions in forest and agricultural ecosystems. More recently, she leads plant pathology projects, optimizes resource allocation and contributes to patent development in industry. Beyond research, she has championed STEM outreach and workforce development, mentoring students and early-career professionals to bridge science, industry and community engagement in sustainable agriculture and conservation.

Colón Carrión’s dedication to mentorship and community engagement reflect her commitment to increasing human diversity in ecology. She has created multiple pathways for underrepresented communities in ecology through programs like Líderes Boricuas en Ciencias Agrícolas, which supports students at the University of Puerto Rico with professional development and leadership training. Her initiative Micología en Ruedas has brought fungal ecology education directly to high school students across Puerto Rico, making ecological science accessible to diverse audiences.

As Vice President of Ciencia en tus Manos, Colón Carrión has expanded science communication in Spanish and created the “Desde los Zapatos de un Boricua en STEM” program to highlight Puerto Rican STEM role models. In her current role at the Hispanic Access Foundation’s MANO Project, she manages 20 interns in a variety of federal agencies, creating a direct pipeline for underrepresented groups into ecology careers. Through her mentorship, outreach and advocacy, Colón Carrión has shaped the future of ecology by ensuring that it is more inclusive and accessible to all.

George Mercer Award
Lynette H. L. Loke and Ryan A. Chisholm

ESA presents the 2025 George Mercer Award to Lynette H. L. Loke and Ryan A. Chisholm, authors of “Unveiling the Transition from Niche to Dispersal Assembly in Ecology,” published in Nature June 7, 2023.

The George Mercer Award was established in 1948 and is awarded annually for an outstanding ecological research paper published within the past two years by a younger researcher (the lead author of the paper must be 40 years of age or younger at the time of publication).

The paper recognized by this year’s award advances our understanding of the effects of immigration on species coexistence in intertidal communities. Previous theories suggested that niches will dictate the maximum numbers of species that can coexist in a community, and that only very slow arrival of new species will keep communities from reaching this maximum. Loke and Chisholm conducted an extensive field experiment with a novel community assembly design to manipulate immigration rates, then went further by combining these results with a model to test alternative hypotheses for community assembly.

Using a new theory, the authors showed that the number of niches in a habitat sets a low floor rather than a high ceiling on the number of coexisting species — and that there appears to be no ceiling at all if new species arrive rapidly enough. The results support the view that most species coexist transiently, not stably, and that coexistence is maintained by ongoing immigration.

Deftly integrating field experiments with clear hypotheses and mathematical modeling, this study provides novel insights into an ecological question that has been debated for decades. The results of the paper advance our understanding of the forces structuring ecological communities, and the authors combine theory and empirical evidence in a creative and exceptionally well-written way.

W.S. Cooper Award
Matthias Grenié, Emilio Berti, Juan D. Carvajal‐Quintero, Gala Mona Louise Dädlow, Alban Sagouis and Marten Winter

William S. Cooper was a pioneer of physiographic ecology and geobotany, with a particular interest in the influence of historical factors — such as glaciations and climate history — on the pattern of contemporary plant communities. The Cooper Award thus honors the authors of an outstanding publication in the field of geobotany, physiographic ecology, plant succession or the distribution of plants along environmental gradients.

This year’s Cooper Award goes to the authors of “Harmonizing taxon names in biodiversity data: A review of tools, databases and best practices,” published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution Jan. 17, 2022.

The authors systematically categorized and reviewed taxonomic databases as well as software for accessing and reconciling them with one another, generated an app for users to explore and compare these tools and provided best-use guidelines for taxonomic harmonization. Their work has proven incredibly useful for studies evaluating changes in species distributions over space and time and will continue to strengthen the fields of geographic botany, plant succession and the distribution of organisms across environmental gradients. 

The synthesis of big data has become critical for addressing important ecological questions. However, species names often differ across databases, and linking information about species among databases is fraught with issues. The authors’ tremendous work to overcome these issues has already had an impressive impact and has been cited an average of 24 times per year. Their paper symbolizes the shift in ecology toward using big data to address important ecological questions, and is a great service to the field.

Sustainability Science Award
Joshua H. Daskin, Angeline N. Meeks, Vivienne L. Sclater, Julie M. Sorfleet, Jon Oetting, Thomas S. Hoctor, Joseph M. Guthrie and Hilary M. Swain

The Sustainability Science Award recognizes the authors of the scholarly work that makes the greatest contribution to the emerging science of ecosystem and regional sustainability through the integration of ecological and social sciences. This year’s award is given to the authors of “Marshaling science to advance large landscape conservation,” published in Conservation Science and Practice Aug. 27, 2024, for their groundbreaking contribution to sustainability science.

This research team has demonstrated the transformative power of actionable science in preserving the 18-million-acre Florida Wildlife Corridor, one of the world’s most ambitious habitat connectivity projects. By combining rigorous research with innovative tools like the Florida Circuit Model and by fostering partnerships with landowners, government agencies, corporations and nongovernmental organizations, their work has contributed to the permanent protection of over 191,000 acres and the allocation of $2.3 billion in state funding. Their efforts serve as a model for co-produced science that inspires impactful conservation outcomes.

The article highlights a trifecta of critical approaches to conservation action: “Documenting the Development Threat,” “Prioritizing the Corridor” and “Communicating and Convening Science.” The team has lifted conservation prioritization to a new level, enabling local governments and nongovernmental organizations to make land-use decisions backed by data. This model has been instrumental for organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation for their planning of conservation areas and promoting innovative development practices. Moreover, the team’s dedication to effective science communication and collaboration has ensured the practical application of their findings. Their cross-organizational cartographic standards, educational outreach and workshops have united stakeholders under a shared vision of sustainability.

Forrest Shreve Research Award
Taylor R. Pichler, M.S. student, Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology, New Mexico State University

Forrest Shreve was an internationally known American botanist devoted to the study of the distribution of vegetation as determined by soil and climate conditions, with a focus on desert vegetation. The Forrest Shreve Research Award supplies $1,000–2,000 to support ecological research by graduate or undergraduate student members of ESA in the hot deserts of North America (Sonora, Mohave, Chihuahua and Vizcaino).

Taylor R. Pichler is selected to receive this year’s Forrest Shreve Student Research Award for his work studying the interactive effects of bats and arthropods on shrub encroachment dynamics in the Chihuahuan Desert.

Pichler is a wildlife ecology master’s student at New Mexico State University. His current research focuses on whether bat predation of plant-eating insects and other arthropods affects rates of shrub encroachment in the Jornada Basin Long-Term Ecological Research site in the northern Chihuahuan Desert, where grassland is converting to shrubland. He plans to construct custom ultraviolet light traps to measure arthropods and employ acoustic monitoring to track bats across grass- and shrub-dominated sites. This work will generate novel data and improve our understanding of the food webs and dominant ecological drivers in the rapidly changing habitats of America’s deserts.

 

2024 Annual Meeting Student Awards

 

Murray F. Buell Award for Excellence in Ecology Award
Larissa S. Saarel, M.S. student, Department of Biology, Missouri State University

Murray F. Buell had a long and distinguished record of service and accomplishment in the Ecological Society of America, and he ascribed great importance to the participation of students in meetings and to excellence in the presentation of papers.

This year’s Murray F. Buell Award for Excellence in Ecology, which is awarded to a student each year for an outstanding oral paper presented at the ESA Annual Meeting, goes to Larissa S. Saarel for her 2024 ESA presentation titled, “Reproductive ecology and movement patterns of Staurotypus triporcatus in Belize.”

A passionate researcher, Saarel possesses a curiosity for studying elusive species and uncovering the hidden aspects of their behavior. Her research touches on reproductive and spatial ecology, with a strong focus on projects related to environmental change and conservation practices. Saarel’s talk shared her thesis research at Missouri State University, in which she studied imperiled Northern Giant Musk Turtles (Staurotypus triporcatus) in central Belize. Examining a population of female S. triporcatus, she linked patterns of the turtles’ reproduction and movement to the seasonality of Belize’s distinct wet and dry seasons, as well as to environmental changes such as flooding.

Saarel is recognized for the depth and rigor of her research, including high-quality remote field work. Her field studies impressively linked basic ecological research on freshwater turtles to applied, actionable conservation outcomes, while combining work with local communities, intensive field monitoring in remote locations and lab analyses.

Lucy Braun Award for Excellence in Ecology Award
Gayatri Anand, Ph.D. student, Department of Biology, University of Maryland

Lucy Braun, an eminent plant ecologist and one of the charter members of the Society, studied and mapped the deciduous forest regions of eastern North America and described them in her classic book, The Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America.

To honor her, the E. Lucy Braun Award for Excellence in Ecology is given to a student for an outstanding poster presentation at the ESA Annual Meeting. Papers and posters are judged on the significance of ideas, creativity, quality of methodology, validity of conclusions drawn from results and clarity of presentation.

Gayatri Anand is the recipient of the E. Lucy Braun Award for her poster presentation at the 2024 Annual Meeting titled, “PKDE: A new technique for population range estimation from animal tracking data.”

A spatial ecologist who uses quantitative approaches to study animal movement using tracking data, Anand shared a novel method to estimate more accurate population range sizes of a variety of animals, such as grizzly bears, lowland tapirs and bobcats. The work she presented impressively combined modeling, simulations and validation with field-collected data. Her findings convincingly demonstrated that the new approach not only works; it improves upon previous methods that are sensitive to sample size and may underestimate animals’ population ranges.

 

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Learn more about the upcoming ESA Annual Meeting, August 10–15, on the meeting website.
ESA invites press and institutional public information officers to attend for free. To register, please contact ESA Public Affairs Manager Mayda Nathan directly at mayda@esa.org.

The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 8,000 member Society publishes six journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach, and education initiatives. The Society’s Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at https://www.esa.org.

 

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