Hiroyuki Matsuda, a professor at Yokohama National University, has received the 10th (2012) Ecological Society of Japan Award. Matsuda, who is president of the Ecological Society of Japan, was nominated for the award by a committee for his work on conceptual mathematics models that are used to investigate basic problems in evolutionary ecology, population ecology, and community ecology. According to the committee, Matsuda has deepened our understanding of ecology in the following areas: the effect of switching predation that stabilizes the population dynamics of the community, the establishment of exploitative mutualisms mediated by predator-specific defenses, co-evolutionarily stable community structure, the evolution of the anisogamy by convergent instability in evolutionary dynamics, and self-extinction due to adaptive evolution. Based on the results of realistic mathematical models, Matsuda has helped elucidate understanding of the dynamics of fisheries resources, of wildlife, and of ecosystems.

His results help policy makers in their management plans. In the area of marine-resources management, he proposed the "cyclic advantage hypothesis" for sardine-anchovy-mackerel population dynamics. In the area of wildlife management, particularly related to the control of the explosive increase of the sika deer, he helped create a new scientific approach by fostering the introduction and development of feedback management based on monitoring and predictive modeling in Japan for the first time. In addition, he marshaled the idea of risk management, including ecological risk, precautionary principle, and adaptive management, as well as methods of its implementation. These studies appear in more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, with the total number of citations exceeding 2,000.