James R. Carey, ESA Fellow (2011)

Dr. James Carey is considered the world’s foremost authority on arthropod demography, having published over 200 scientific papers and three books on this or closely-related topics, including the monograph Longevity (Princeton, 2003) and the “go-to” book on insect demography, Demography for Biologists with Special Emphasis on Insects (Oxford, 1993). His landmark paper on “slowing of mortality at older ages,” published in Science in 1992 and cited more than 350 times, keys in on his seminal discovery that mortality slows at advanced ages. The UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Science cited this as one of “100 Ways in Which Our College Has Shaped the World.”

Dr. Carey is also considered one of the world’s authorities on the demography and invasion biology of tephritid fruit flies, particularly the Mediterranean fruit fly. He published one of the first papers on the formal demography of any insect species (medfly) and discovered what has been termed by demographers as “Carey’s Equality”—a unique property of the life table that connects it to a stationary population. His research on the invasion status of the medfly in California has generated much-needed discussion within the entomological community about definitions of eradication, the concept of subdetectable levels of invasive pests, and the need for a paradigm shift in invasion biology of economically and medically important arthropod pests.

Dr. Carey is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gerontological Society of America, and the California Academy of Sciences. He chaired the system-wide University of California Committee on Research Policy, served on the system-wide UC Academic Council, and was vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology. In addition, he serves as the associate editor of three journals: Genus, Aging Cell, and Demographic Research.

(updated July, 2011)