Professor Emeritus Department of Ecology and Evolution SUNY at Stony Brook State University of New York

Education : Lab Page : Research Interests :

Ph.D. 1951, Yale University Larry Slobodkin is a Professor Emeritus, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Guggenheim Fellow and Woodrow Wilson Institute Fellow. He is past president of the American Society of Naturalists, the General Systems Research Society and of Stony Brook University Faculty Senate. He is an editor of Evolutionary Ecology, and past editor of The American Naturalist. He is the founding chairman of the Ecology and Evolution Program and Department. His research is on ecology and evolution and has included laboratory and field studies of natural history. He also works on evolutionary theory, philosophy of science and environmental affairs. He is specifically interested in trophic cascade theory, evolutionary optimization, red tides, daphnia, coreals and hydra. He studied population dynamics and symbiosis in brown and green hydra demonstrating the general phenomenon that symbiosis can under particular environmental circumstances become parasitism. A central problem of ecology is that the phenomena are complex and the theories are simple. He is concerned with understanding the ideas of simplicity and complexity in this context and also the relevance of ecological theory to policy decisions. At present he anticipates retirement in the reasonably proximate future at which time he will continue with field research on Swan Pond hydra and cladocera and with writing.