Rate My Professor Morgan Tingley

Morgan Tingley is Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, with a joint appointment in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard University (2003, summa cum laude), an M.Sc. in Integrative Bioscience from the University of Oxford (2004, distinction), and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, Berkeley (2011). His professional trajectory includes Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Bird Populations (2011-2012), David H. Smith Conservation Research Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University (2012-2014), Assistant Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut (2014-2019), and Associate Professor at UCLA (2019-2024).

Tingley's scholarship centers on the ecological impacts of anthropogenic disturbances, including climate change, invasive species, land-use alteration, and shifting fire regimes, on species distributions and biotic interactions over timescales spanning years to centuries. Specializing in avian ecology within temperate montane systems like California's Sierra Nevada, he merges field observations with biodiversity big data and sophisticated quantitative models. Influential publications encompass "Birds track their Grinnellian niche through a century of climate change" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009), "The push and pull of climate change causes heterogeneous shifts in avian elevational ranges" (Global Change Biology, 2012), "Fire and biodiversity in the Anthropocene" (Science, 2020), and "Advances in breeding phenology outpace latitudinal and elevational shifts for North American birds tracking temperature" (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2024). His work has influenced conservation policy and media coverage in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. Tingley is an elected Fellow of the American Ornithological Society (2018), recipient of the Ecography Award (2020), Wings Across the Americas Conservation Award (2014), and UCLA Excellence in Educational Innovation Award (2024). He serves as Subject Editor for Ecography (2014-present), President-Elect of the American Ornithological Society (2024-2026), and chairs UCLA EEB graduate admissions and curriculum committees.