Research Overview

My career has been driven by a deep interest in the context of diversity and the importance of this context for the creation of and maintenance of more sustainable relationships with the non-human world. I am an ecologist, a natural historian, and a conservation biologist. For me, all of these roles revolve around the study of context - the study of the physical and biological environment that surrounds, and, quite literally, gets inside organisms, populations, and communities. This context defines the contours of diversity, and I am convinced that this context is critical to understanding the responses of populations and communities, and the resilience of biological diversity in the face of change - human caused and otherwise. It follows that our ability to predict, minimize and mitigate our impacts on the non-human world, and our ability to live sustainably within the ecology of this planet, rests on two things: our understanding of the forces that shape and reshape the organisms around us, and our understanding of the way these organisms shape and reshape our societies. My work thus reflects a balance between basic ecological and evolutionary research into the contexts that define, create and maintain life on this planet, and application of these concepts and findings to the most pressing human-caused impacts on diversity. For a one-page PDF overview of current research going on in my lab, click here .

Biography

Josh Tewksbury received his BA from Prescott College in 1992.  He received his PhD from the University of Montana in 2000.  Josh then did post-doc wok in Florida, South Carolina, and Bolivia, and then joined the faculty of the University of Washington in 2003.

Selected Publications