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email:  tbsmith@ucla.edu
phone:  310-206-4712
fax:  310-825-5446
office:  La Kretz Hall Suite 300,
lab:  Life Science 5318
homepage:  http://www.ioe.ucla.edu/ctr

research interests:  Evolutionary ecology, speciation, and conservation of vertebrates, especially in the tropics.

Research Interests

Currently, my research focuses on: 1. Mechanisms of speciation, 2. Ecological and evolutionary aspects of vertebrate-mediated seed dispersal in the maintenance and dynamics of rainforests, 3. Molecular genetic approaches to investigating microevolutionary divergence and population genetic structure of migrant birds, 4. Evolution of resource polymorphisms, 5. Ecology of disease, and 6. Conservation biology. Field sites include West Africa, North, South, and Central America, and Australia. In addition to my appointment in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, I am also the Director of the Center for Tropical Research (CTR) http://www.ioe.ucla.edu/CTR, a part of the UCLA Institute of the Environment (IoE) http://www.ioe.ucla.edu/.

Selected Publications

Valkiūnas G., T. A. Iezhova, C. Loiseau, A. Chasar, T. B. Smith, and R. N. M. Sehgal. 2009. New malaria parasites of the subgenus Novyella in African rainforest birds, with remarks on their high prevalence, classification and diagnostics Parasitology Research 104: 1061-1077 .

Smith, T. B. 2009. Equating forest conservation with hornbill conservation. Ecology and Conservation of Asian Hornbills: Farmers of the Forest. By Kinnaird, M. F, and T. G. O’Brien Conservation Biology 23: 782-783 .

Kirschel, A. N. G., D. T. Blumstein, and T. B. Smith. 2009. Character displacement of song and morphology in African tinkerbirds Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106: 8256-8261 .

Mila, B., R. K. Wayne, P. Fitze, and T. B. Smith. 2009. Divergence with gene flow and fine-scale phylogeographic structure in the wedge-billed woodcreeper Glyphorynchus spirurus, a Neotropical rainforest bird Molecular Ecology 18: 2979-2995 .

Bonneaud, C, I. Sepil, B. Mila, W. Buermann, J. Pollinger, R. N. M. Sehgal, G. Valkiūnas, T. A. Iezhova, S. Saatchi, and T. B. Smith. 2009. The prevalence of avian Plasmodium is higher in undisturbed tropical forests of Cameroon Journal of Tropical Ecology 25: 439-447 .

Njabo, K. Y., A. J. Cornel, R. N. M. Sehgal, C. Loiseau, W. Buermann, R. J. Harrigan, J. Pollinger, G. Valkiūnas, and T. B. Smith. 2009. Coquillettidia (Culicidae, Diptera) mosquitoes as new natural vectors of avian malaria in Africa Malaria Journal 8: 193 [link].

Kirschel, A. N. G., D. T. Blumstein, R. E. Cohen, W. Buermann, T. B. Smith, and H. Slabbekoorn. 2009. Birdsong tuned to the environment: green hylia song varies with elevation, tree cover, and noise Behavioral Ecology 20: 1089-1095 .

Smith, T. B. and L. Bernatchez. 2008. Evolutionary change in human-altered environments Molecular Ecology 17: 1-8 .

Smith, T. B., B. Mila, G. F. Grether, H. Slabbekoorn, I. Sepil, W. Buermann, S. Saatchi, and J. P. Pollinger. 2008. Evolutionary consequences of human disturbance in a rainforest bird species from central Africa Molecular Ecology 17: 58-71 .

Calsbeek, R., and T. B. Smith. 2008. Experimentally replicated disruptive selection on performance traits in a Caribbean lizard Evolution 62: 478-484 .