| Citation | Professor John Lawton has made distinguished contributions, both theoretical and experimental, to several areas of community ecology, as well as to population dynamics and entomology. The unifying theme of his work is a search for patterns in the structure of natural communities. His early studies on ecological energetics are now classics, and led to his influential work on the structure of food webs. His field studies on the most species-rich food chains known, namely green plants, phytophagous insects and their natural enemies, has resulted in seminal work on phytophage diversity, and to an understanding of the influence of "plant architecture". More recently he has turned his attention to parasitoid diversity, and to pioneering theoretical ideas about the way in which the fractal dimension of vegetation may influence body sizes, abundances and species richness of phytophagous insects. His long term field studies on the insect herbivores of bracken are a major contribution to experimental community ecology. Currently he is engaged in a unique programme to bring bracken (a major British weed) under biological control. |