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 (with Dr. Barbara Ambrose as Co-PI) to study the taxonomy, phylogeny, and leaf evolution of Elaphoglossum sect. Squamipedia, a neotropical fern genus of about 20 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 a doctoral student, Fernando Matos, who is working on a monograph of Elaphoglossum sect. Polytrichium.

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.

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.

Rouhan, G., F. Rakotondrainibe and R. C. Moran. 2007. Elaphoglossum nidusoides (Dryopteridaceae), a new species of fern from Madagascar with an unusual phylogenetic position within the Squamipedia group. Syst. Bot. 32: 227-235.

Moran, R. C., J. Garrison Hanks and G. Rouhan. 2007. Spore morphology in relation to phylogeny in the fern genus Elaphoglossum (Dryopteridaceae). International Journal of Plant Science 168: 905-929.

Moran, R. C. 2004. A Natural History of Ferns. Timber Press. 301pp.