Postal Address:

Robert Colwell
The University of Connecticut
75 N. Eagleville Road, Unit 3043
Storrs, CT 06269-3043, U.S.A.

Research

Biodiversity inventory, biodiversity informatics, and biodiversity statistics. Biogeography theory and models. Species interactions and coevolution, especially between plants and animals (arthropods, hummingbirds). Evolution in structured populations. Biology and public policy.

Click here to download a CV.

Recent and Selected Publications

Click here to download a CV with a complete list of publications.

References marked "Download pdf" are available here for downloading.
When asked for Name and Password, enter guest for Name and ref for Password.
(This approach prevents indexing web crawlers from publishing access to personal-use copyright material.)

Lees, D. C., and R. K. Colwell. 2007. A strong Madagascan rainforest MDE and no equatorward increase in species richness: Re-analysis of "The missing Madagascan mid-domain effect," by Kerr J.T., Perring M. & Currie D.J (Ecology Letters 9:149-159, 2006). Ecology Letters 10:E4-E8. Download pdf.

Rangel, T. F. L. V. B., J. A. F. Diniz-Filho, and R. K. Colwell. 2007. Species richness and evolutionary niche dynamics: a spatial pattern-oriented simulation experiment. American Naturalist. 274: 165-174. Download pdf.

Horner-Devine, M. C., J. M. Silver, L. M. A, B. J. M. Bohannan, R. K. Colwell, J. A. Fuhrman, J. L. Green, C. R. Kuske, J. B. H. Martiny, L. Øvreås, A.-L. Reysenbach, and G. Muyzer. 2007. A comparison of taxon co-occurrence patterns for macro- and microorganisms. Ecology 88: 1345-1353.

Brehm, G., R. K. Colwell, and J. Kluge. 2007. The role of environment and mid-domain effect on moth species richness along a tropical elevational gradient. Global Ecology & Biogeography 16:205-219. Download pdf.

Rahbek, C., N. Gotelli, R. K. Colwell, G. L. Entsminger, T. F. L. V. B. Rangel, and G. R. Graves. 2007. Predicting continental-scale patterns of bird species richness with spatially explicit models. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B 274:165-174 . Download pdf or read online.

Cardelús, C., R. K. Colwell, and J. E. Watkins, Jr. 2006. Vascular epiphyte distribution patterns: explaining the mid-elevation richness peak. J. Ecology 94: 144-156. Download pdf.

Chao, A., R. L. Chazdon, R. K. Colwell, and T.-J. Shen. 2006. Abundance-based similarity indices and their estimation when there are unseen species in samples. Biometrics 62:361-371. Download pdf.

Dunn, R. R., R. K. Colwell, and C. Nilsson. 2006. The river domain: why are there more species halfway up the river? Ecography 29:251-259. Download pdf.

Watkins, J. E., Jr., C. Cardelús, R. C. Moran, and R. K. Colwell. 2006. Diversity and distribution of ferns along an elevational gradient in Costa Rica. American Journal of Botany 93:73-83. Download pdf.

Colwell, R. K., C. Rahbek, and N. Gotelli. 2005. The mid-domain effect: there's a baby in the bathwater. American Naturalist 166:E149–E154. Download pdf or read online.

Bunker, D. E., F. DeClerck, J. C. Bradford, R. K. Colwell, I. Perfecto, O. L. Phillips, M. Sankaran, and S. Naeem. 2005 (20 October). Species loss and aboveground carbon storage in a tropical forest. Science (Express Reports) 10.1126/science.1117682:1-5. Download pdf.

Chao, A., R. L. Chazdon, R. K. Colwell, and T.-J. Shen. 2005. A new statistical approach for assessing compositional similarity based on incidence and abundance data. Ecology Letters 8:148-159. Download pdf.

Mao, C. X., and R. K. Colwell. 2005. Estimation of species richness: mixture models, the role of rare species, and inferential challenges. Ecology 86:1143-1153. Download pdf.

Mao, C. X., R. K. Colwell, and J. Chang. 2005. Estimating species accumulation curves using mixtures. Biometrics 61:433-441. Download pdf.

Romdal, T. S., R. K. Colwell, and C. Rahbek. 2005. The influence of band sum area, domain extent and range sizes on the latitudinal mid-domain effect. Ecology 86:235-244. Download pdf.

Jetz, W., C. Rahbek, and R. K. Colwell. 2004. The coincidence of rarity and richness and the potential signature of history in centres of endemism. Ecology Letters 7:1180-1191. Download pdf.

Colwell, R. K. 2004. Biota 2: The biodiversity database manager. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA. (Software and 880 p. Manual. Predecessor Biota 1 has more than 1000 users in 40 countries and 48 U.S. states.)

Colwell, R. K. 2004. EstimateS, Version 7: Statistical Estimation of Species Richness and Shared Species from Samples (Software and User's Guide). Freeware for Windows and Mac OS. (EstimateS has been downloaded more than 10,000 times by users in more than 100 countries. It is cited in nearly 250 publications.)

Colwell, R. K., C. X. Mao, and J. Chang. 2004. Interpolating, extrapolating, and comparing incidence-based species accumulation curves. Ecology 85 :2717-2727. Download pdf.

Koh, L. P., R. R. Dunn, N. S. Sodhi, R. K. Colwell, H. C. Proctor, and V. S. Smith. 2004. Species coextinctions and the biodiversity crisis. Science 305:1632-1634. Online Abstract. Online full text.

Longino, J., Coddington, J. A., and Colwell, R. K. 2002. The ant fauna of a tropical rainforest: estimating species richness three different ways. Ecology 83:689-702. Download pdf.

Gotelli, N., and Colwell, R. K. 2001. Quantifying biodiversity: Procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness. Ecology Letters 4:379-391. Download pdf.

Colwell, R. K. 2000. Rensch's Rule crosses the line: Convergent allometry of sexual size dimorphism in hummingbirds and flower mites. American Naturalist 156:495-510. Download pdf.

Colwell, R, K. 2000. A barrier runs through it...or maybe just a river (Commentary). PNAS 97:13470-13472. Download pdf.

Colwell, R. K., and Lees, D. C. 2000. The mid-domain effect: geometric constraints on the geography of species richness. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15:70-76. Download pdf. (Related software: RangeModel.)

Oliver, I., Pik, A., Britton, D., Dangerfield, J. M., Colwell, R. K., and Beattie, A. J. 2000. Virtual biodiversity assessment systems: the application of bioinformatics technologies to the accelerated accumulation of biodiversity information. BioScience 50:441-450.

Colwell, R. K., and Naeem, S. 1999. Sexual sorting in hummingbird flower mites. Annals of Entomological Society of America 92:652-659.

Chazdon, R. L., Colwell, R. K., and Denslow, J. S. 1999. Tropical tree richness and resource-based niches. Science 285:1459a. Download pdf.

Longino, J. T. and Colwell, R. K. 1998. Biodiversity assessment using structured inventory: Capturing the ant fauna of a lowland tropical rainforest. Ecological Applications 7:1263-1277. Download low resolution pdf. Download high resolution pdf.

Chazdon, R. L., R. K. Colwell, J. S. Denslow, & M. R. Guariguata. 1998. Statistical methods for estimating species richness of woody regeneration in primary and secondary rain forests of NE Costa Rica. Pp. 285-309 in F. Dallmeier and J. A. Comiskey, eds. Forest biodiversity research, monitoring and modeling: Conceptual background and Old World case studies. Parthenon Publishing, Paris. Download pdf.

Naskrecki, P., and R. K. Colwell. 1998. Systematics and host plant affiliations of hummingbird flower mites of the genera Tropicoseius Baker and Yunker and Rhinoseius Baker and Yunker (Acari: Mesostigmata: Ascidae). Thomas Say Publications in Entomology: Monographs. Entomological Society of America. 185 pp.

Colwell, R. K. 1995. Effects of nectar consumption by the hummingbird flower mite Proctolaelaps kirmsei on nectar availability in Hamelia patens. Biotropica 27: 206-217. Download pdf.

Colwell, R. K., and Coddington, J. A. 1994. Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Series B) 345:101-118. Download low resolution pdf. Download high resolution pdf. [Reprinted in D. L. Hawksworth, ed. Bio-diversity: Measurement and estimation. Chapman and Hall, London.] (Related software: EstimateS.)

Colwell, R. K., and Hurtt, G. C. 1994. Nonbiological gradients in species richness and a spurious Rapoport effect. American Naturalist 144:570-595. Download pdf. (Related software: RangeModel.)

Software Tools & Documentation

Colwell, R. K. 2007. Biota 2: The biodiversity database manager. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA. (Software and 880 p. Manual. Predecessor Biota 1 has more than 1000 users in 40 countries and 48 U.S. states.)

Colwell, R. K. 2006. EstimateS, Version 8.0: Statistical Estimation of Species Richness and Shared Species from Samples (Software and User's Guide). Freeware for Windows and Mac OS. (EstimateS has been downloaded more than 20,000 times by users in more than 100 countries. It is cited in more than 300 publications.)

Colwell, R. K. 2006. RangeModel, Version 5: a Monte Carlo simulation tool for assessing geometric constraints on species richness. (Simulation and analysis software.) Freeware for Windows and Mac OS.

Courses Taught

General Ecology (EEB 244)
Population and Community Ecology (EEB 301)
Evolution and Ecology of Communities (EEB 375),
Seminar in Biodiversity (EEB 481)

Current Graduate Students

Tsitsi McPherson (Guyana) (PhD Program): Protecting Biodiversity in Guyana - a proposal for a flexible yet robust methodology for the design and evaluation of National Parks using spatially clustered data.

Thiago Fernando L. V. B. Rangel (Brazil) (PhD Program): Integrating ecological and evolutionary processes in ztochastic biogeographical models

Previous Graduate Students

Alphabetical by surname, with current employment in parentheses

Institution awarding the degree:
UCB = University of California, Berkeley
UConn = University of Connecticut

Carol Baird, Ph.D., UCB (Director, California Institute for Biodiversity, Oakland, California)

Rudi Berkelhamer, Ph.D., UCB (Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, University of California, Irvine)

Elizabeth Braker, Ph.D., UCB (Associate Professor, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California)

Saul Cunningham, Ph.D., UConn (Research Scientist, CSIRO, Canberra, Australia)

David S. Dobkin, Ph.D., UCB (Director, H igh Desert Ecological Research Institute , Bend Oregon)

Robert R. Dunn, Ph.D., UConn (Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina)

Eduardo R. Fuentes, Ph.D., UCB (Consultor Biodiversidad y Desarrollo, Chile; formerly, United Nations Development Program, New York)

Lloyd Goldwasser, Ph.D., UCB (Research Associate, Department of Demography, University of California, Berkeley)

William Glanz, Ph.D., UCB (Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maine, Orono)

Matthew Greenstone, Ph.D., UCB (Senior Research Entomologist, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, Maryland)

Leon Hallacher, Ph.D., UCB (Professor, Department of Biology, U. Hawaii, Hilo)

Amy J. Heyneman, Ph.D., UCB (International Ecotourism Coordinator, Seattle, Washington)

James H. Hunt, Ph.D., UCB (Professor and Chair, Department of Biology, University of Missouri, St. Louis)

Fabian Jaksic, Ph.D., UCB (Profesor Titular, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile)

Anna Lovrien, M.S., UConn (Biology Teacher, John Marshall High School, Minneapolis, Minnesota)

Tsitsi McPherson, M.S., UConn (Currently studying in Colwell laboratory at the University of Connecticut for the Ph. D.)

Shahid Naeem, Ph.D., UCB (Professor and Chair, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York)

Piotr Naskrecki, Ph.D., UConn ( Director, Invertebrate Diversity Initiative, Conservation International, Washington, D. C; and Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts )

Ariel Power, M.S., UCB (Research Associate, Forest Products Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley)

Margaret Race, Ph.D., UCB ( SETI Institute Principal Investigator, U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA SETI Institute, Mountain View, California)

Carlos Robles, Ph.D., UCB (Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles, California)

George R. Roderick, Ph.D., UCB (Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management; and Curator, Essig Museum of Entomology, University of California, Berkeley)

Sacha Spector, Ph.D., UConn (Manager, Invertebrate Conservation Program, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History, New York )

Martha L. Stout, Ph.D., UCB (Senior Scientist, Office of Wetlands Protection, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC)

Juan A. Torres, Ph.D., UCB (Professor, Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Deceased 2004)