Robert K. "Rob" Swihart

Related Web Pages:

• 4S Tool

Research:

• Animal-mediated acorn dispersal and seedling recruitment
• Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment
• Occurrence and abundance of acorn weevils in fragmented landscapes
• Testing metapopulation theory with flour beetles in micro-landscapes
• Toxin-mediated plant-herbivore interactions

Courses:

• FNR 241, Vertebrate Ecology and Systematics – Mammals

Robert K. “Rob” Swihart is Professor and Head of the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources (FNR) at Purdue University.  Rob received his B.S. in Wildlife Science from Purdue University in 1979, his M.S. in Wildlife from the University of Minnesota in 1981, and his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Kansas in 1985.  He worked one year as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow and, in 1986 accepted a position as a research ecologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.  He joined the faculty at Purdue in 1991.  Rob has served as Head of FNR since 2004.  As Department Head, he is responsible for leadership and oversight of 30 faculty, 37 administrative and professional staff, 11 clerical staff, 255 undergraduate students, and 85 graduate students, and administers a budget of approximately $8.5 million annually.

Rob was the first faculty member in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources to be named a University Faculty Scholar.  He has published over 120 scholarly works, many of which are widely cited.  His research interests include effects of habitat fragmentation on wildlife, population and community ecology of mammals, spatial ecology, plant-herbivore interactions, and wildlife damage management. He relies on a combination of mathematical, experimental, and comparative approaches to address the importance of spatial structure for behavioral and ecological processes affecting the conservation and management of vertebrates, with a goal of developing quantitative tools for informing policy makers and stakeholders of the consequences of land-use change for biodiversity and species conservation. Rob’s research spans levels of biological organization from individuals to communities and spatial scales ranging from microsites to continents. Many of his interests are inherently interdisciplinary, which has led to strong collaborative ties with mathematicians, statisticians, specialists in remote sensing, botanists, parasitologists, endocrinologists, chemists, hydrologists, economists, demographers, and social scientists.