Mutualism Ecology Chris Moore

Welcome to Chris Moore's website! I'm an ecologist at Colby College specializing in the population and community ecology of mutualism. I have brader expertise in species interactions, coevolution, dispersal, seed dispersal, and ecological theory.

I am transition to this website, so it will remain fairly bare bones through late 2023. I am hoping that it will provide people interested in my work a centralized location to find all my work and to learn about about it more comprehensively in the research page that I will write soon.


New preprint posted with Colby alumnus

Last week Joseph Savage (class of 2022) posted a preprint of his Biology Honor’s thesis on bioRxiv! The manuscript, which will soon be submitted for peer review, asks the question How do host population dynamics impact Lyme disease risk dynamics in theoretical models? The novel approach that Joseph took was that he added a dimension of biological reality to a host-tick-Lyme model where he allowed host populations—primarily small mammals that are strongly influenced by masting tree species like oaks and maples—to vary dynamically, just like they are commonly observed to do in natural populations. We find that including this realistic aspect of host populations makes for more accurate predictions of prevalence of Lyme. Here is a link to the study: link.

Hiring 4 Summer Research Assistants

Last week we were awarded our 2023 Summer Research Assistantships (SRAs). This year I will be hiring 4, with one being a Data Science SRA. If any Colby students are interested please reach out ASAP because I want to hire all four as soon as possible (1 or 2 weeks after break).

Article on our Movement Ecology of Mutualism symposium published

Our open access Annual Meeting article is now published and available in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America: link. Allison Shaw (UMN) and I co-organized the symposium at the 2022 ESA Annual Meeting and wrote up a summary and synthesis with co-authors and presenters in the symposium, Bethanne Bruninga-Socolar, Eleanor M. Caves, Alex T. Karnish, Kasey N. Kiesewetter, Annika S. Nelson, and Elizabeth G. Pringle.