|
|
 |
Robbin C. Moran
Mary Flagler Cary Curator of Botany, The New York Botanical Garden
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois (1986)
"Monograph of the Neotropical Fern Genus Polybotrya (Dryopteridaceae)"
Expertise: Ferns and lycophytes
|
|
|
|
Profile |
My main research interests are ferns. I work primarily in the American tropics, especially Central America and the Andes. Much of my research has involved writing floras and monographs, which assemble information about ferns of a given region and provide a means to identify them. I was the main writer, editor, and organizer for the pteridophyte volume of Flora Mesoamericana, a book that covers the pteridophytes from southern Mexico to Panama. This book is the largest fern flora ever written (it treats the nearly 1400 species). I currently have a grant from the United States National Science Foundation to study Megalastrum, a neotropical fern genus of about 60 species.
Besides research, I teach. I co-organize a five-week-long course, Tropical Plant Systematics, in Costa Rica for the Organization of Tropical Studies. The course is taught even years in English and odd years in Spanish. Occasionally I teach short, two- to three-week-long fern courses in Latin America (in Spanish). Every three or four years I teach a full-semester, graduate-level course in the study of ferns at The New York Botanical Garden. I currently have two doctoral students, Michael Sundue and Alejandra Vasco, working on grammitid ferns and Elaphoglossum, respectively.
I also interpret ferns to the public. I am the President of the New York Chapter Fern Society, which meets the first Saturday of every month at the Garden. Finally, I serve as Associate Editor for Brittonia, the Garden's journal of systematic botany, and for the American Fern Journal.
|
Selected Publications |
Moran, R. C. 2008. Biogeography of ferns and lycophytes. Pages 369-396. In: C. Haufler & T. A. Ranker, editors. The Biology and Evolution of Ferns and Lycophytes. Cambridge University Press.
Prado, J. and R. C. Moran. 2008. Revision of the neotropical species of Triplophyllum (Tectariaceae). Brittonia 60: 103-130.
Rouhan, G., D. H. Lorence, T. J. Motley, J. G. Hanks and R. C. Moran. 2008. Systematic revision of Elaphoglossum (Dryopteridaceae) in French Polynesia, with description of three new species. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 158: 309-331.
> More Publications
|
| |
|
|
Moran CV