Moritz, Craig - The Australian National University

个人简介

Craig did his undergraduate at University of Melbourne (1976-1979), where he developed his passion for evolutionary biology. For his PhD at ANU (1980-1985), he studied chromosome evolution and speciation in arid zone lizards, along the way discovering all-female reproduction in Heteronotia binoei. Then he moved across the Pacific Ocean for a postdoc at University of Michigan (1985-1988; mitochondrial DNA and evolution of parthenogenesis), before returning to a faculty position at The University of Queensland (1988-2000), including a stint as Head of School. From 2000-2012 he was Director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley. From mid 2012 he happily settled at EEG/RSB as a Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow. Craig is also the Director of the joint ANU-CSIRO Centre for Biodiversity Analysis.

研究领域

Biodiversity discovery & conservation The majority of species remain to be discovered, yet habitats are being lost of affected by global change at an ever increasing rate. New tools from genomics, phylogenetics and spatial environmental analysis are revolutionizing our ability to discover diversity and map hotspots of unique species- or phylo-diversity. Building on previous studies of rainforests in eastern Australia and Brazil, and in California, our lab is now turning its attention to the monsoonal tropics of Australia – perhaps the largest ecologically intact tropical savanna on the planet, and also a frontier for biodiversity discovery. Biogeography and speciation How new species form through a combination of selection, drift and isolation is intimately connected with the dynamics of the habitats they occupy in time and space. Our lab seeks to understand this dynamic at multiple scales, from populations and phylogographic lineages to entire clades, often using a comparative approach in particular biogeographic regions (eg. The Australian Wet Tropics Rainforests), and all in the context of current and paleo-environments. As a continental-scale island with a largely endemic biota, Australia provides an excellent opportunity for such studies. Biological responses to climate change Though existing species have persisted through multiple episodes of climate change in the past, we are entering a new phase of rapid, human-caused climate change with no analogue in the recent geological past. Understanding how species respond by migration or adaptation is key to finding strategies to promote persistence of biodiversity. Our lab studies this through a combination of comparative studies of phenotypic and genomic diversity in across environments in space and time. One potential solution is to identify long-term climatic refugia across the landscape - also likely centers of local diversity – and seek to protect these and habitat linkages to them. We also are using a combination of population genomics and data on trait and environments to test whether peripheral isolates of rainforest lizards are better adapted to climate fluctuation than populations in core rainforests.

近期论文

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Fujita, M. K., J. A. McGuire, S. C. Donnellan, & C. Moritz (2010): “Diversification & persistence at the arid-monsoonal interface: Australia-wide biogeography of the Bynoe’s gecko (Heteronotia binoei; Gekkonidae).” Evolution 64:2293-2314 Bell, R.C., J. L. Parra, M. Tonione, C. Hoskin, J. B. MacKenzie, S. E. Williams & C. Moritz (2010): “Patterns of persistence & isolation indicate resilience to climate change in montane rainforest lizards.” Molecular Ecology, 19 (12): 2531-2544. Moritz C., C. J. Hoskins, J. B. MacKenzie, B. L. Phillips, M. Tonione, N. Silva, J. VanDerWal, S. E. Williams, & C. H. Graham (2009): “Identification & dynamics of a cryptic suture zone in tropical rainforest.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences 276: 11235-1244. Carnaval, A.C., M. J. Hickerson, C. F. B. Haddad, M. Rodrigues & C. Moritz (2009): “Stability predicts genetic diversity in the Brazilian Atlantic forest hotspot.” Science 323: 785-789 Moritz, Craig, J. L. Patton, C. J. Conroy, J. L. Parra, G. C. White, & S. R. Beissinger (2008): “Impact of a century of climate change on small-mammal communities in Yosemite National Park, USA.” Science 322: 261-264. Graham, C. H., C. Moritz & S. E. Williams (2006). "Habitat history improves prediction of biodiversity in rainforest fauna." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103: 632-636 Hoskin, C. J., M. Higgie K. R. McDonald & C. Moritz (2005). "Reinforcement drives rapid allopatric speciation." Nature (London) 437: 1353-1356. Hugall, A., Craig Moritz, A. Moussalli & J. Stanisic (2002). "Reconciling paleodistribution models & comparative phylogeography in the Wet Tropics rainforest land snail Gnarosophia bellendenkerensis (Brazier 1875)." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99: 6112-6117. Moritz, Craig (2002). "Strategies to protect biological diversity & the evolutionary processes that sustain it." Systematic Biology 51: 238-254. Moritz, C. (1994). "Defining 'evolutionary significant units' for conservation." Trends in Ecology and Evolution 9(10): 373-375. Moritz, C. & W. M. Brown (1987). "Tandem Duplications in Animal Mitochondrial DNA Species Variation in Incidence & Gene Content among Lizards." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 84(20): 7183-7187. Moritz, C. (1983). "Parthenogenesis in the Endemic Australian Lizard Heteronotia binoei Gekkonidae." Science (Washington D C) 220(4598): 735-737