Dr. John D. Parker is the Principal Investigator in charge of the Terrestrial Ecology Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
Originally trained as a marine ecologist in the laboratories of Drs. JJ Orth and Emmett Duffy at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and then in marine and freshwater ecology by Dr. Mark Hay at Georgia Tech, Parker completed a freshwater/terrestrial post-doctorate with Dr. Anurag Agrawal at Cornell University before arriving at SERC in 2007. Although most of his work is now ‘aboveground’ in the terrestrial realm, Parker’s research still tries to retain a broad perspective after having worked with a diverse array of critters ranging from mudbugs to microbes.