the recipient of the University of Southern California's Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. Lovejoy has been granted the 2008 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category (ex aequo with William F. Laurance). In 2001, Lovejoy received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Peter H. Raven. In 2004, a new wasp species that acts as a parasite on butterfly larvae was discovered on the Pacific slope of the Talamanca mountain range in Costa Rica by Ronald Zúñiga, a specialist in bees, wasps and ants at the National Biodiversity Institute (INBio). INBio named the species Polycyrtus lovejoyi in honor of Lovejoy for his contributions in the world of biodiversity and support for INBio. On October 31, 2012, Lovejoy was awarded the Blue Planet Prize for being "the first scientist to academically clarify how humans are causing habitat fragmentation and pushing biological diversity towards crisis." Lovejoy served continuously on the board of directors, from 2000, of the Amazon Conservation Team, which works in partnership with indigenous people of tropical South America in conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest, as well as the culture and land of its indigenous people. He served on the board of directors from 2009 for the Amazon Conservation Association, whose mission is to conserve the biological diversity of the Amazon. He was also an emeritus member of the board of directors for Population Action International and served on the Scientific Board of SavingSpecies (elevated to SavingNature in 2019), a conservation organization featured in a Nature magazine article about Thomas Lovejoy's scientific accomplishments. In 2016, he was selected as a U.S. Science Envoy by the United States State Department. In 2018, Lovejoy co-founded the Amazon Biodiversity Center to support the work of the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project. In 2021, he was elected member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences. He died from pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor on December 25, 2021, in McLean, Virginia, at the age of 80. References External links Another Bio Biography page on Amazon Biodiversity Center website Thomas Lovejoy's BBC Reith Lecture on Biodiversity BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards Scientific Board of SavingSpecies 1941 births 2021 deaths Scientists from New York City Yale University alumni George Mason University faculty American ecologists Brazilianists Recipients of the Great Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit (Brazil) Members of