Dr. NORBERT CORDEIRO

Assistant Professor, Department of Biological, Chemical and Physical Sciences

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I am an ecologist/conservation biologist with deep interests in questions that pertain to how ecological processes maintain biodiversity.  I am particularly interested in the species extinction crisis, where many organisms have already gone extinct and others are clearly doomed as a result of numerous human activities. At the heart of the global extinction crisis is not so much the extinction of individual species from habitat loss, habitat fragmentation or direct hunting but an unravelling of the myriad biological interactions that shape ecological communities.  Daniel Janzen encapsulated this idea in 1974, writing: "What escapes the eye is a much more insidious kind of extinction: the extinction of ecological interactions."  By focusing on how landscape level changes influence ecological processes such as seed dispersal and pollination, my research takes an interdisciplinary approach to addressing Janzen's prediction.

Understanding how relationships between plants and animals are affected by human-caused habitat disturbance and fragmentation is critical given that many such interactions may directly or indirectly influence species extinctions and thereby impact the integrity of pristine habitats.  My research therefore has strong implications for conservation of tropical forests and their biota, and its applications have relevance more locally, including the urban environments of Chicago.