The History of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

In 2015 the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB) celebrated its 50th birthday. It came into being during Cornell’s centennial year and fifty years after the founding of the Ecological Society of America as part of a revolutionary change in the biological sciences at Cornell. It was the first department of its kind in the US and possibly the world, though it was followed closely by ecology departments at the University of Arizona and SUNY Stony Brook2. Initially it was called a Section in the new Division of Biological Sciences with the name Ecology & Systematics. This history of EEB allows us to examine how a new department in emerging academic disciplines came to happen, how it evolved in a dynamic way, and how it has been able to retain a leadership role at Cornell and internationally.

The Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) was founded in 1965 as the Section of Ecology and Systematics (E&S) within the newly formed Division of Biological Sciences. The Division ended in 1998 and its eight sections became departments. At its founding E&S was the first U.S. academic department to focus on ecology. David Pimentel, Head of the Department of Entomology and Limnology, was a major proponent and led a committee that proposed a department addressing ecology and systematics. A founding faculty was identified during the spring of 1965 with much opposition from departments that would lose faculty to the Division. The Section of E&S began operation during the summer of 1965 with a founding faculty of 12 from three departments in two colleges: Zoology, Conservation (currently Natural Resources and Environment), and Entomology and Limnology (currently Entomology). Those from Entomology had joint appointments, which has linked the two departments to the present time. E&S was intended to include many of the approximately 15 systematics faculty in several department of the College of Agriculture (currently Agriculture and Life Sciences). In the end only William Brown from Entomology joined, the rest remaining with their departments or joined other sections. Zoology ceased operating as a department in 1965 and its Chair, Lamont Cole, became Chair of the new Section.

In the beginning, faculty members remained in four campus buildings. In 1965, vertebrate collections were moved in 1965 to former aircraft maintenance buildings at the airport that were part of a new Cornell Research Park. By 1968, a majority of faculty members moved to Langmuir Laboratory, a former General Electric research building at the airport. E&S shared this building with the Section of Neurobiology and Behavior (NBB) and the university’s mainframe computer. After considerable pressure and leadership from Brian Chabot and other faculty, the university administration agreed to build Corson-Mudd Halls, which E&S and NBB occupied in 1982.

For the first decades, the academic programs of E&S were organized around ecology and vertebrate biology. An undergraduate concentration within the Biological Sciences major began as Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. Systematics was dropped following protests from the systematics faculty who had remained outside the Division and the major. “Systematics” in the original title lives on in the current department because most faculty have a continued interest in organismal biology and with its custodianship of the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates.

Two introductory ecology courses, one for majors and one for non-majors were each taught every semester to large numbers of students. David Pimentel had initiated a general ecology course prior to the Section and he and Lamont Cole taught the non-majors version of this course. The Biology of Vertebrates was also a large introductory course taught in one semester using a rotating cadre of faculty. The graduate program was organized around four core courses conceived by Robert Whittaker: autecology, population, community, and ecosystem ecology. These courses represented the academic organization of the department.

The 12 founding faculty members expanded to the current 29. Cornell had received a large Ford Foundation grant to support its pioneering reorganization of the biological sciences. Several new faculty members were recruited with these funds, especially Robert Whittaker, Lee Miller, and Peter Marks. This added plant ecology as an early focus within the Section. Other faculty members were added over time through the department’s participation in college and university initiatives.

E&S began with strong faculty programs in vertebrate biology, population ecology, insect ecology, biogeochemistry, and limnology. New faculty developed strength in plant ecology, chemical ecology, community and ecosystem ecology, and mathematical ecology. It has maintained strength in vertebrate biology. The department is also honored by its long and deep association with the foremost ornithological institute in the world, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

Evolutionary biology was a primary focus of one founding faculty, William Brown, who taught an advanced course on the topic. However other faculty addressed evolutionary processes in their research, especially Lamont Cole, David Pimentel, Peter Brussard and Paul Feeny. Charles Aquadro was the first faculty member hired specifically to develop a program in evolutionary biology. This was followed soon by Richard Harrison and then by other faculty using advancing techniques of genetic analysis to explore evolutionary and ecological questions. The evolutionary biology course became required for all biology majors, its enrollment expanded, and faculty were employed to teach this every semester. Evolutionary biology became sufficiently important so that when the Division disbanded in 1998, the department name changed to include ecology and evolutionary biology.