The Serengeti Rules is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Nicolas Brown, and based on the book by Sean B. Carroll. The film explores the discoveries of five pioneering scientists—Tony Sinclair, Mary E. Power, Bob Paine, John Terborgh, and Jim Estes—whose decades of research laid the groundwork for modern ecology and offer hope that environmentalists today may be able to “upgrade” damaged ecosystems by understanding the rules that govern them.

Sean B. Carroll is an American evolutionary developmental biologist, author, educator and executive producer. He is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland and professor emeritus of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His studies focus on the evolution of cis-regulatory elements in the regulation of gene expression in the context of biological development, using Drosophila as a model system. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, of the American Philosophical Society (2007), of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for Advancement of Science. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.