The University of California, Davis, faculty has selected ecologist Thomas W. Schoener, professor of biology and environmental studies, as its 1994 Faculty Research Lecturer, one of the campus Academic Senate's most prestigious awards. "Professor Schoener is widely considered by his peers to be the nation's most accomplished contemporary community ecologist, who has consistently produced research of the very highest caliber," said Charles R. Goldman, professor of environmental studies and chair of the selection committee. "His dedication has made him famous both nationally and internationally," said Goldman, who called Schoener a "modern-day Darwin" because of his extensive field work and impact on the field of ecology. Established in 1941 by the Davis Sigma Chi Club, the Faculty Research Lecturer is awarded annually to those faculty members whose research contributions have greatly enhanced human knowledge and have brought widespread honor and recognition to themselves and the university. In 1951, the UC Davis Academic Senate assumed responsibility for the award. The most recent recipients have been David Brody, professor emeritus of history (1991); Shang Fa Yang, professor of vegetable crops (1992); and Goldman (1993). The recipient delivers a spring lecture on a topic in his or her field of study. Schoener is known as a versatile field naturalist, ecological experimenter and quantitative theorist of population biology. In his studies of food webs on small tropical islands, Schoener, who chairs the campus evolution and ecology section in the Division of Biological Sciences, has made significant contributions to the understanding of important ecological interactions. For more than a dozen years, Schoener has kept close watch over more than 100 islands in the Bahamas. He and his coworkers have tracked the lives and relationships of lizards, birds, spiders, trees and shrubs that inhabit the scrubby subtropical terrain. He is especially interested in learning how competition and predation interact with each other and how the two forces shape community structure. He has found that the loss of top predators in a food web may indirectly affect the organisms at the web's base -- the plants -- in addition to the animals eaten by the predators. Such information, while illustrating the complexities of interactions within the web, also could prove valuable for those who manage natural resources for agricultural pest control. Schoener received both his bachelor's and doctoral degrees in biology from Harvard University, where he also began his academic career, ascending to the rank of associate professor in only four years. After five years as an associate and full professor at the University of Washington, he joined the UC Davis faculty in 1980. He is author of more than 100 publications, many of which are already considered classics in their field. In 1984, at the age of 41, he was among the youngest members elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 1991, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1986, he received the Ecological Society of America's highest honor, the MacArthur Prize, and was a 1992-93 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. For his fellowship, Schoener expanded his studies to 64 more tropical islands off the northeastern coast of Australia. During this expedition, he found 55 species of spiders, doubling the number of those previously known in the region. The work also included lizards and birds, to provide comparisons with his long-term ecological research in the West Indian island system. The Australian island research promises to be a valuable step in extending the knowledge gleaned from the well-studied Bahamas to other ecological systems around the globe. Recent parallels have been drawn between islands, with their well-defined borders, to the remaining patches of wildlife habitats on large continents that appear nearly as ecologically insulated as islands.