 In a related paper, Tilman used this model to demonstrate the phenomenon of "extinction debt," which refers to the time delay between habitat destruction and the extinction of species.In 2014, he received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category, for scientifically establishing the value of biodiversity, quantifying, for the first time, how it contributes to make ecosystems more productive, more resilient to invasions, and more stable in the face of perturbations such as drought.He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the National Academy of Science.