The Riverine Ecosystem Synthesis

Dr. James H. Thorp has been a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University ofKansas (Lawrence, KS, USA) and a Senior Scientist in the Kansas Biological Survey since 2001. Prior to returning tohis alma mater, Professor Thorp was a Distinguished Professor and Dean at Clarkson University, DepartmentChair and Professor at the University of Louisville, Associate Professor and Director of the Calder Ecology Center ofFordham University, Visiting Associate Professor at Cornell,and Research Ecologist at the University of Georgia'sSavannah River Ecology Laboratory. He received his Baccalaureate from the University of Kansas (KU) and bothMasters and PhD degrees from North Carolina State. Those degrees focused on zoology, ecology, and marine biology,with an emphasis on the ecology of freshwater and marine invertebrates. Dr. Thorp has been on the editorial board ofthree freshwater journals and is a former President of the International Society for River Science. He teaches freshwater,marine, and invertebrate courses at KU, and his Master and Doctoral graduate students work on variousaspects of the ecology of communities through macrosystems in rivers, reservoirs, and wetlands. ProfessorThorp's research interests and background are highly diverse and span the gamut from organismal biology to community,ecosystem, and macrosystem ecology. He works on both fundamental and applied research topics using descriptive,experimental, and modeling approaches in the field and lab.While his research emphasizes aquatic invertebrates, he alsostudies fish ecology, especially as related to food webs. He has published more than 130 refereed journal articles, books,and chapters, including three single-volume editions of Ecology and Classification of North American FreshwaterInvertebrates (edited by J.H. Thorp and A.P. Covich) and five volumes in the current fourth edition of Thorp andCovich's Freshwater Invertebrates.