Ran Nathan (; born 1962) is an Israeli biologist, ornithologist, and academic.

He is an ecologist who holds the Adelina and Massimo Della Pergola Chair of life Sciences at the Hebrew University of JerusalemRan Nathan, Dept. of Ecology, Evolution & BehaviorThe Division for Advancement and External Relations, HUJI in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and BehaviorThe Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, HUJI where he leads the Movement Ecology Lab.Movement Ecology Lab website Additionally, Nathan is the director of the Minerva Center for Movement Ecology and the co-founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the free-access journal Movement Ecology (BioMed Central).Movement Ecology Journal Editorial Board

His work focuses on various aspects of movement ecology, including dispersal (and long-distance dispersal in particular), migration, foraging, navigation, flight aerodynamics, animal behavior, social interactions, invasive species, disease spread by avian species, gene flow, plant-animal interactions and plant recruitment.

Research interests Long-distance dispersal

Nathan's earlier work (since 1999) focused on seed dispersal, and long-distance dispersal (LDD) in particular. In a series of studies, he and his colleagues demonstrated the strength of the mechanistic approach in understanding seed dispersalMechanisms of long-distance dispersal of seeds by wind, Nature, 2002 and plant dynamics, as well as the importance of rare long-distance dispersal events in plants (Nathan 2006 Science), their underlying mechanisms and their role in determining spread rates of plants in future environments.

Movement ecology In an interview for Science Watch (October 2010),Ran Nathan on the Growing Importance of Movement Ecology, Science Watch Nathan revealed that the idea to establish movement ecology as a new field of research was born in 2002, when he was a first-year faculty member supervising one student on seed dispersal and another on bird migration, facing the question “what name should I call my research group”? This has led him to wonder why different movement phenomena are studied in isolation from each other, and why there is still no general unifying theory of organismal movement. He then decided to call his research group "movement ecology", and later on noticed this term has already been used in the literature, but very occasionally at the time and never in the context of a unifying research paradigm.

In 2006, Nathan initiated and led an international group at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in JerusalemIsraeli Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem which has set the foundation for development of the field of movement ecology as a new integration of movement research. In 2008, he edited a Special Feature on Movement EcologyMovement Ecology Special Feature, PNAS, 2008 for the Proceedings of the National Academy of USA.Proceedings of the National Academy of USA This collection included a perspective paper introducing the basic concepts and a framework for integrating movement research.A movement ecology paradigm for unifying organismal movement research, PNAS, 2008An emerging movement ecology paradigm, PNAS, 2008 In 2012, Nathan established the Minerva Center for Movement Ecology supported by the Minerva FoundationMinerva Foundation and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a German-Israeli interdisciplinary research center for studying movement ecology. Together with Prof. Sivan Toledo (Computer Sciences, Tel Aviv University),Sivan Toledo, TAU he developed a revolutionary wildlife tracking system called ATLAS (Advanced Tracking and Localization of Animals in real-life Systems), a portable, affordable tracking system capable of automatically and simultaneously tracking a large number of small animals (20 grams and less) in high accuracy and high sampling frequency.The ATLAS projectFlying with the birds, Deutsche Welle In 2013, Nathan co-founded a new open-access journal, Movement Ecology (BioMed Central),Movement Ecology Journal website which has become a major forum for publishing studies on the movement of animals and plants.

Education, appointments, professional activity and honors Education

Bachelor of Science in Biology (with distinction), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 1989–1992. Ph.D. in Ecology (Supervisors: Profs. U. N. Safriel and I. Noy-Meir), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, Department of Evolution, Systematics and Ecology (now Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, 1994–2000 Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Associate (Supervisor: Prof. S. A. Levin), Princeton University, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 1999–2001

Appointments

Lecturer, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, 2001–2003Asian Science Camp program, 2012 Senior Lecturer, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, 2003 Senior Lecturer, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2003–2005 Associate Professor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2005–2009 Full Professor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2009–present

Selected professional activities Initiator & group leader, Movement Ecology Group (International Research Group at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, Jerusalem, Israel), 2006–2007 Elected Chair, Department of Evolution, Systematics and Ecology (now Department of Ecology, Evolution. and Behavior), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2007–2009 Elected Chairman, Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2009–2011 Director, Minerva Center for Movement Ecology, Israel, 2012–Present Visiting Professor, Murdoch University, Australia, 2013 Vice Dean for Appointments, Faculty of Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2013–2016 Co-founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Movement Ecology (BMC & Springer, Open-Access) Vice Chair, Gordon Research Conference on Animal Movement Ecology, US, March 2017 Recipient of various research grants: overall raised >11.5 million USD in 42 research grants, 1999–2016 Invited plenary/keynote speaker in 30 international conferences, >100 invited seminars/lecture, as of Nov. 2016 Published 112 peer-reviewed publications, including 93 journal articles, 11 book chapters and 8 proceeding papers, as of Nov. 2016

Selected honors

The Yoram Ben-Porath Prize for Outstanding Young Researcher, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2005Ecological Expert Chosen to Receive HU’s President’s Prize for Outstanding Young ResearcherIsraeli prize winner rides the wave of movement ecology The Friedrich W. Bessel Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, 2006News Release of HUJI, HU Researcher wins Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award Adelina and Massimo Della Pergola Chair of Life Sciences, 2011 International Collaboration Award, Australian Research Council, 2011The Australian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem talk - An Emerging Movement Ecology Paradigm High-end Foreign Experts Program, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2015

Selected publications

Nathan, R., and H. C. Muller-Landau. (2000). Spatial patterns of seed dispersal, their determinants and consequences for recruitment. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 15:278-285. Nathan, R., G. G. Katul, H. S. Horn, S. M. Thomas, R. Oren, R. Avissar, S. W. Pacala, and S. A. Levin. (2002). Mechanisms of long-distance dispersal of seeds by wind. Nature 418:409-413. Nathan, R. (2006). Long-distance dispersal of plants. Science 313:786-788.Long-distance dispersal of plants, Science, 2006 Nathan, R., W. M. Getz, E. Revilla, M. Holyoak, R. Kadmon, D. Saltz, and P. E. Smouse. (2008). A movement ecology paradigm for unifying organismal movement research. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 105:19052-19059. Nathan, R., F. M. Schurr, O. Spiegel, O. Steinitz, A. Trakhtenbrot, and A. Tsoar. (2008). Mechanisms of long-distance seed dispersal. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 23:638-647. Nathan R., N. Horvitz, Y. He, A. Kuparinen, F. M. Schurr, and G. G. Katul. (2011). Spread of North-American wind-dispersed trees in future environments. Ecology Letters 14:211-219. Tsoar, A., R. Nathan, Y. Bartan, A. Vyssotski, G. Dell'Omo, and N. Ulanovsky. (2011). Large-scale navigational map in a mammal. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 108:E718-E724.Large-scale navigational map in a mammal, PNAS, 2011 Nathan, R., O. Spiegel, S. Fortmann-Roe, R. Harel, M. Wikelski, and W. M. Getz. (2012). Using tri-axial acceleration data to identify behavioral modes of free-ranging animals: general concepts and tools illustrated for Griffon Vultures. J. Exp. Biol. 215:986-996.Using tri-axial acceleration data to identify behavioral modes of free-ranging animals: general concepts and tools illustrated for Griffon Vultures, Journal of Experimental Biology, 2012 Horvitz, N., N. Sapir, F. Liechti, R. Avissar, I. Mahrer, and R. Nathan. (2014). The gliding speed of migrating birds: Slow and safe or fast and risky? Ecology Letters 17:760-769. Shohami, D., and R. Nathan. (2014). Fire-induced population reduction and landscape opening increases gene flow via pollen dispersal in Pinus halepensis. Molecular Ecology 23:70-81.

References

External links Movement Ecology Lab home page Minerva Center for Movement Ecology home page Movement Ecology Journal home page PNAS Special Issue on Movement Ecology