Daniel Simberloff is perhaps best known as a student of the biologist E.O. Wilson,one of the co-authors of the theory of Island biogeography (By R. MacArthur and E.O. Wilson. He was one of the first to test this theory experimentally in Floridian Mangrove systems producing studies such as the 1969 paper: Experimental Zoogeography of Islands: The Colonization of Empty Islands. He is admired for his thorough statistical approach to ecology. Simberloff enjoyed stirring up the occasional controversy, and in recent years has repudiated some of his earlier work on island biogeography.

Simberloff is also very active on the invasive species front, studying the theoretical susceptibility of ecosystems to invasion from exotic species, the practical implications of these invasions and the potential interactions between invasive species including the potential for invasional meltdown -- where the introduction of one exotic species changes the ecosystem such that even more invasive species can move in (this work with Betsy Von Holle, one of his graduate students and a post doc at the Harvard Forest and AAAS Fellow in Washington DC.). He has also written several books on the subject.

Simberloff is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

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