People

Professor Roderick’s research focuses on global change, especially the impact of global biological homogenization caused by biological invasions.  The work addresses basic and applied questions, taking advantage of the opportunities associated with the geography of the Pacific Basin, Pacific Islands, Pacific Rim, and California.  Research includes studies of the origins of both endemic and non-indigenous organisms, processes associated with colonization and invasion, population structure, species interactions, and response to climate change.  Approaches include field manipulations, natural experiments, data science, GIS, niche modeling, eDNA, population genomics, and collections-based research. Questions address colonizations and history in geological time, such as the assembly of ecological communities in the Pacific islands, and recent biological invasions, their causes, impacts, and solutions, including those of disease vectors and biological control.  Research collaborations include the Moorea BioCode Project, Island Digital Ecosystem Avatars (IDEA), NSF Hawaii Dimensions of Biodiversity, and a recent SERDP-funded project using eDNA to monitor invasive terrestrial arthropods in the Pacific.

Professor Roderick’s research has appeared in Science, Nature, Nature Reviews Genetics, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Ecosphere, Global Ecology and Biogeography, Global Change Biology, Ecological Applications, Journal of Biogeography,  Biological Invasions, GigaScience, Ecology, Ecology Letters, American Naturalist, Annual Review of Entomology, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Molecular Ecology, Biological Control, Genetics, Evolution, Current Biology, PLoS Biology, PLoS One, Peer J, Zootaxa, among other journals. He has edited two volumes, Evolution and Biological Control (2012) and DNA Barcoding of Life (2005).

Professor Roderick holds the William Muriece Hoskins Professorship of Chemical and Molecular Entomology, and is Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, UCLA, and a member of the Center for Invasive Species Research, UC Riverside.  He has served the State Department, National Science Foundation, US Environmental Protection Agency, and US Department of Agriculture, in various capacities, including chairing the first Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum's workshop on Alien Invasive Species, which included 17 economies in Beijing in 2005.

Professor Roderick is currently Faculty Director for UC’s Gump South Pacific Research Station in French Polynesia. At UC Berkeley, he chaired the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (2014-19), and the Academic Senate Committee on Research.  Recent teaching includes the ecology/environment section of Introductory Biology (Bio1B), the Berkeley "Moorea Class" (ESPM C107/IB 158LF)  and a new "Island Sustatinability Semester" (ESPM 109A-E).