Rate My Professor William Foley

William Foley is an Emeritus Professor in the Research School of Biology, Division of Ecology and Evolution, at the Australian National University. He obtained a Bachelor of Natural Resources (Honours) in 1978 and a PhD in 1985 from the University of New England, with his doctoral research focused on the nutritional ecology of leaf-eating marsupials. Prior to academia, Foley worked in water and land management in the Northern Territory and Finland, and his observations of monkeys consuming poisonous plants in Congo sparked his lifelong interest in plant-herbivore interactions. He completed postdoctoral fellowships studying lizards in Israel, sloths in French Guiana, and marsupials at Monash University. In 1990, he took up a lecturing position at James Cook University, moving to the Australian National University in 1997 where he established the Foley Group on animal-plant interactions.

Foley's research explores the ecology and evolution of plant-animal interactions in the Australian biota, integrating physiology, analytical chemistry, molecular genetics, and quantitative genetics across scales from individuals to landscapes. Key areas include the role of plant secondary metabolites such as terpenes and tannins in herbivore nutrition, particularly in folivores like koalas and possums, and the impacts of climate on feeding behavior. With over 200 peer-reviewed publications and more than 17,000 citations, notable works include 'Linking Vegetation Characteristics of Madagascar’s Spiny Forest to Habitat Occupancy of Lepilemur petteri' (2024, International Journal of Primatology), 'Secondary Compounds in Primate Foods: Time for New Approaches' (2024), 'Warmer ambient temperatures reduce protein intake by a mammalian folivore' (2023, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B), 'Evolutionary relationship of the NBS-LRR gene family in Melaleuca and Eucalyptus' (2023, Tree Genetics & Genomes), and the highly cited 'Ecological applications of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy' (1998, Oecologia). Foley has received the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2012), Mercator Gastprofessor award (2006), Lynsey Welsh Award (1998), and multiple ANU teaching commendations (2010-2011). He serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Chemical Ecology and Chemoecology, and chairs the Science Advisory Board of the Canadian White Spruce Genome project (SMarTForests).