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John Philip Grime FRS (30 April 1935 – 19 April 2021) was an ecologist and emeritus professor at the University of Sheffield. He is best known for the universal adaptive strategy theory (UAST) and the twin filter model of community assembly with Simon Pierce, eco-evolutionary dynamics, the unimodal relationship between species richness and site productivity ("humped-back model"), the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, and DST classification (dominants, subordinates and transients).

Grime's 1979 book Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes has been cited more than 1,200 times. Together with many influential scientific papers, it has made him a highly cited scientist. In an interview Grime has stated that "Ecology lacks a Periodic Table", quoting Richard Southwood.

Education

Grime obtained his PhD from University of Sheffield in 1960.

Career and research

Grime joined the staff of the department of botany at Sheffield in 1961. He worked at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, US from 1963 to 1964. He then returned to the University of Sheffield and joined the unit of comparative plant ecology, which had been founded in 1961 by professor Ian H. Rorison. Grime served as deputy director of the Natural Environmental Research Council Unit of Comparative Plant Ecology from 1964 to 1989 and as director from 1989.

Plant strategies

His work and his theories are focused on plant strategies, as developed along their evolutionary history. His CSR theory says that each plant species has a blend of the three strategies that he labels C (competitive), S (stress tolerant) and R (ruderal, or rapid propagation). Ruderal strategists thrive in disturbed areas. He has described a method to classify herbaceous vegetations by analysing the importance of the three strategies in the genotypes of the species that are present.

Selected publications

• The Evolutionary Strategies that Shape Ecosystems
• "Vegetation classification by reference to strategies"
• Evidence for the existence of three primary strategies in plants and its relevance to ecological and evolutionary theory
• Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes
• Plant Strategies, Vegetation Processes, and Ecosystem Properties. (2nd much expanded edition of the above)
• Benefits of plant diversity to ecosystems: immediate, filter and founder effects
• "Trait convergence and trait divergence in herbaceous plant communities: mechanisms and consequencesre"
• "Plant strategy theories: a comment on Craine"

Awards and honours

In 1991, Grime was inducted as a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1997, he won the Marsh Ecology Award from the British Ecological Society and was awarded honorary membership of the Ecological Society of America. He was also Distinguished Visiting Ecologist at Pennsylvania State University in that year. In 1998, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and honorary doctor at University of Nijmegen. He has been honorary member of the British Ecological Society since 1999. He was the first ever recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Medal (2011) for his outstanding contribution to the intellectual development of plant community ecology.

In 2013, the Journal of Ecology published a collection of Grime's most influential papers, for which he wrote a blog post and recorded an accompanying podcast interview.

References

1. ^ "Philip Grime – Royal Society". Royalsociety.org. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
2. Pierce, Simon; Fridley, Jason D. (2021). "John Philip Grime 30 April 1935 — 19 April 2021". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 71: 249–270. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2021.0021. S2CID 239700780.
3. ^ "Academic Staff & Independent Research Fellows". 13 October 2007. Archived from the original on 13 October 2007. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
4. ^ Moore, Peter (July 1996). "University of Sheffield's Philip Grime: Strategic Advances in Plant Ecology". Science Watch. Thomson Scientific. Archived from the original on 17 November 2007. Retrieved 21 November 2021.
5. ^ Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes Wiley. (1979) ISBN 0-471-99692-0
6. ^ Plant Strategies, Vegetation Processes, and Ecosystem Properties, Wiley, (2001) ISBN 0-471-49601-4
7. "Ecology/Environment category list". ISIHighlyCited.com. Archived from the original on 4 December 2011. Retrieved 18 May 2012.
8. Ken Thompson, Sandra Díaz (17 May 2021). "J. Philip Grime (1935-2021)". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 5 (7): 890–891. Bibcode:2021NatEE...5..890T. doi:10.1038/s41559-021-01480-6.
9. ^ Grime, J. Philip; Pierce, Simon (30 April 2012). The Evolutionary Strategies that Shape Ecosystems. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-470-67481-9.
10. ^ Grime, J. Philip (1974). "Vegetation classification by reference to strategies". Nature. 250 (5461): 26–31. Bibcode:1974Natur.250...26G. doi:10.1038/250026a0. S2CID 4189430.
11. Grime, J. P. (1977). "Evidence for the Existence of Three Primary Strategies in Plants and Its Relevance to Ecological and Evolutionary Theory". The American Naturalist. 111 (982): 1169–1194. Bibcode:1977ANat..111.1169G. doi:10.1086/283244. ISSN 0003-0147. S2CID 84903724.
12. Grime, J. P. (1998). "Benefits of plant diversity to ecosystems: immediate, filter and founder effects". Journal of Ecology. 86 (6): 902–910. Bibcode:1998JEcol..86..902G. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2745.1998.00306.x. ISSN 0022-0477. S2CID 34581057.
13. Grime, J. Philip (2006). "Trait convergence and trait divergence in herbaceous plant communities: Mechanisms and consequences". Journal of Vegetation Science. 17 (2): 255–260. Bibcode:2006JVegS..17..255G. doi:10.1111/j.1654-1103.2006.tb02444.x. ISSN 1100-9233.
14. Grime, J. Philip (2007). "Plant strategy theories: a comment on Craine (2005)". Journal of Ecology. 95 (2): 227–230. Bibcode:2007JEcol..95..227G. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2745.2006.01163.x. ISSN 0022-0477. S2CID 2233079.
15. "J.P. Grime". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 30 January 2016. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
16. Fridley, Jason (2011), Alexander von Humboldt Medal J. Philip Grime (PDF)
17. "In Honour of J Philip Grime – Journal of Ecology". Journalofecology.org. doi:10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2745. Retrieved 22 April 2019.

• 1935 births
• 2021 deaths
• British ecologists
• Academics of the University of Sheffield
• Alumni of the University of Sheffield
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• People from Manchester
• Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences