Present
Chris with summer research student Jaslynn Devora examining an ant in her aspirator. Photograph by Ashley Conti.
Chris with summer research students Qingqing Yang, Erica Lei, Jayla Moss, and David Kenet at Camden Hills State Park.
I am currently an Assistant Professor at a small liberal arts college in Maine, U.S., Colby College.
I teach a variety of courses in ecology and organismal biology in large and small courses designed for first-year-through-graduating students. These have included evolution and diversity, ecology, ecology and evolution of infectious disease, entomology, population modeling, evolution, and senior seminar. The aspects of biology that excite me that are at the forefront of my teaching across courses are the diversity of all ecological communities, the complexity of communities and ecosystems, hierarchy and scale in communities and systems, and case studies in bizarre, “rule-breaking” biology (e.g., plants that eat animals, the community composed of a single species, rodents that can live their entire lives without drinking a sip of water). In field- and lab-based experimental parts of my courses I deconstruct and rebuild the tired notion (to students) of hypotheses into a central, causative, testable statement that guides knowledge generation, as well as emphasize the vast diversity of ecological communities and complexity of ecosystems in the role of close, thoughtful, and reflective observation in the field and in labs.
I primarily conduct research with Colby students on campus during the summers where I teach them to do basic ecological research. Over the better part of a decade, we have studied ant diversity and thermal physiology locally here in Maine. I also conduct separate lines of research on the population and community ecology and evolution of mutualism, seed dispersal, and other species interactions. I also have interests in the social science of ecology and have begun exploring bias in ecology.
Two additional academic activities in which I participate and take pride are the Colby Achievement Program in the Sciences (CAPS) and conducting a quantitative curriculum review for the Biology Department. CAPS is a program where incoming students from historically marginalized groups are funded for a summer research and academic experience. I annually run a week-long module on ecology or scientific computing.
I am a lifetime member of the American Society of Naturalists and typically attend the ASN stand-alone meetings and the tri-society Evolution meetings. I consider ASN my home society and currently serve on the Diversity Committee as well as the Early Career Investigator Award Committee.
Past
Chris in 2006 in a lava tube at the Mojave National Preserve.
Postdoctoral research. Prior to Colby I was a postdoctoral research associate at Case Western Reserve University working with Dr. Karen Abbott on theoretical ecology. In this position I learned and refined mathematical and computational skills. This was the time that I began to develop theory on population ecology of mutualism and dove deep into the world of R by developing a package to study stochastic population dynamics (link to the software paper by Moore et al. 2016).
Graduate studies. I did my graduate studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. Here I worked on seed dispersal and the plant genus Arctostaphylos Adans. (Ericaceae) with Steve Vander Wall. These were really my formative years in ecology, evolution, and conducting scientific research. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of my graduate studies is that we radiolabled seeds with a relatively-benign radionuclide so that we could track where rodents would disperse small plant seeds (see for instance, Moore and Vander Wall 2015). During this time I also organized several graduate seminars on the united theory of biodiversity, dispersal, and foundations of evolutionary biology.
Undergraduate studies. I hold a Bachelor of Science from Cal Poly Pomona. On the quarter system I was able to take 150% of the courses offered by the semester system, which meant that I was able to take many courses in zoology and botany, in addition to non-traditional courses, like SCUBA, the philosophy of religion, and insects & civilization. I deeply valued the teaching-centered education I received; especially the breadth and depth of natural history knowledge of many of the older biology faculty. During this period I participated in off-campus studies in Limón, Costa Rica and the Southwestern Research Station in Portal, Arizona.
Personal. I was raised in the eastern Los Angeles County suburbs. I grew up around my extended family, playing sports and video games, playing with my Rhodesian ridgeback, and visiting México and camping around the southwest during the summers. I am the first to go to college among my extended family members, including descendants of both my maternal and paternal grandparental lineages. I now spend my pastime with our dog, woodworking, playing basketball, and reading.
