Craig Moritz

Prior to joining ANU, he was a faculty member at the University of Queensland (1988-2000), where he was also Head of the School of Botany, Zoology and Entomology, and Director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley (2000-12). His work on the Australian wet tropics has explained the origins and maintenance of diversity in that biome and has become an exemplar of predictive historical biogeography and comparative phylogeography. His research focuses on how environmental change shapes the biodiversity of the world's plants and animals through evolution. In a recent study of Californian national parks, he found mammals that lived at high altitudes becoming endangered due to increases in minimum temperature. He has been involved in the discovery of dozens of species, including the Bynoe's gecko that reproduces by cloning itself (parthenogenesis).