Robert J. "Skip" Livingston
May 20, 1937 - March 1, 2024
Robert J. (Skip) Livingston is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Biological Science, at Florida State University. He worked as a field ecologist for the past 53 years in a series of aquatic systems in the southeastern United States. His overall research effort has involved continuous, long-term analyses of lakes, rivers, and coastal systems along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. His team has completed ontological feeding analyses on many of the freshwater and marine fishes and invertebrates that have been transformed into detailed trophic models for the various aquatic ecosystems under study. A 43-year ecosystem-level database has been coupled with laboratory and field experimentation to evaluate how aquatic systems work and how they are affected by human activities. Livingston has graduated 49 graduate students (M.S., Ph. D.) whose research was based on the behavioral and physiological ecology of individual aquatic populations and communities. He has published a series of books and peer-reviewed scientific papers on his research. His more recent book, Climate Effects on Coastal Ecosystems, was published by CRC Press.