Robert Eric Ricklefs

I am interested in the origin and geographic distribution of biological diversity, focusing primarily on the biogeography of birds and their malaria parasites in the West Indies. Particularly intriguing is the idea that coevolutionary relationships between hosts and their parasites drive cycles of population and geographic expansion and contraction (taxon cycles), which may contribute to the diversification of a lineage through the establishment of isolated, independently evolving populations (see Ricklefs, Ecology Letters, 2015).