| Citation | David Tilman is distinguished for showing, through long-term experiments and related theory, that biodiversity is of central importance to the productivity and stability of ecosystems, and for developing and testing simple yet mechanistic theories of interspecific interactions. His theory and experiments have demonstrated how mechanisms of resource competition determine species abundances, the composition and diversity of plant communities, and the effects of nutrient enrichment and habitat destruction on biodiversity. In particular, Tilman’s work shows that interspecific interactions that are constrained by allocation-based tradeoffs lead to coexistence, providing a solution to the paradoxically high diversity of life on Earth. |