More about Farshid

Dr. Farshid S. Ahrestani is a wildlife and quantitative ecologist interested in spatiotemporal questions related to community and population ecology. He is also deeply passionate and interested in biodiversity conservation.

He currently works as a research scholar in the Department of Biology at The Pennsylvania State University, USA, investigating the relations between global population dynamics of large herbivores, mainly Cervus (elk/red deer) and Rangifer (caribou/reindeer), and climate change. Prior to this, he worked as a research scholar at the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University, New York, managing TraitNet. The goal of TraitNet was to facilitate trait-based research by fostering the curation, discovery, and sharing of trait data.

He studied large herbivore ecology in India with a focus on the gaur Bos gaurus for his doctoral research. He is a leading expert on the gaur and is a member of the IUCN Asian Wild Cattle Specialist Group. He is currently co-editing a book on large herbivore ecology in South and Southeast Asia. In addition to his interests in resource and community ecology, he is also interested in functional trait ecology, restoration ecology and conservation ecology.

He has completed a B.E. from BITS, Pilani, an MS in ecology from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, USA, an MS in Computer Science from Syracuse University, USA, and a PhD from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He has published numerous scientific papers in leading international journals, book chapters and popular media articles.