MS Stanford University, Anthropology Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor Conservation Biology Ecological anthropology Erika S. Zavaleta is an American professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
For her thesis, Zavaleta studied the evolution of waterfowl conservation in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta with advisers William Durham and Donald Kennedy.
Her doctoral mentors were Hal Mooney and Chris Field, with her dissertation focused on examining plant diversity and ecosystem functioning in a California grassland as influenced by climate and atmospheric changes.
Zavaleta is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and MacArthur Foundation Chair of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC).
[8] Projects include seeking to understand how global climate changes affect terrestrial ecosystems, analyzing ecosystem stewardship and effective conservation practice in response to global climate changes, and studying the impacts of biodiversity loss.