Quick Facts
Biography
Anurag Agrawal (born 1972) is an American professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and entomology who has written over a 100 peer-reviewed articles, which earned him an h-index of 70. He is the recent author of a popular science book, Monarchs and Milkweeds from Princeton University Press.
Life
Agrawal was born in 1972 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He obtained both BA (Biology) and MA (Conservation Biology) degrees from the University of Pennsylvania after working with Daniel Janzen. In 1999 he earned a Ph.D. in population biology from the University of California, Davis working with Rick Karban. He then became a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam. A year later he became an assistant professor at the University of Toronto in the former Department of Botany, and since 2004 he is professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Department of Entomology at Cornell University. He publishes with a fictitious middle initial (A.) and is sometime confused with Canadian Evolutionary Biologist, Aneil Agrawal.
Research
His work is focused on the ecology and evolution of plant-insect interactions, including aspects of herbivory, community ecology, phenotypic plasticity, chemical ecology, coevolution, and phylogenetics. His current research includes work on NY State biodiversity, the ecology of invasive plants, the biology of Monarch butterflies, and the evolution of plant defense strategies.
Awards
In 1999 the American Society of Naturalists awarded him with the Young Investigator Award and in 2004 became a recipient of Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded with George Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America, in 2009 he was named recipient of the David Starr Jordan Prize., and in 2013 he won the Founders Memorial Award from the Entomological Society of America. In 2016 he was awarded the Robert H. MacArthur Award by the Ecological Society of America.
.He is fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Ecological Society of America.