Mark W. Moffett

Last updated

Mark Moffett (born 7 January 1958) is a tropical biologist who studies the ecology of tropical forest canopies and the social behavior of animals (especially ants) and humans. He is also the author of several popular science books and is noted for his macrophotography documenting ant biology. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Moffett was born in Salida, Colorado, where his father was a Presbyterian minister. As a young boy, he was interested in insects and when the family moved to Wisconsin, he attended meetings of the Wisconsin Herpetological Society, where, at 12, he was the youngest member. Although a high-school drop out he was admitted to Beloit College, and at 17 he was invited to a collecting trip to Costa Rica. He came across the book The Insect Societies and wrote to the author E.O. Wilson before he met him and went on to research under him. [2] Moffett received his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 1989 under Wilson. [3] Moffett is a Research Associate in the Department of Entomology at the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution. [4]

Awards, exhibits and media

Moffett is a past Yale University Poynter Fellow in journalism, [5] received a Bowdoin Prize from Harvard University, [6] the Lowell Thomas Medal from The Explorers Club in 2006, [7] a National Outdoor Book Award in 2010, [8] a PROSE (Professional and Scholarly Excellence) Award from the Association of American Publishers in 2010, [9] and awards for his photography from World Press Photo Foundation [10] and Pictures of the Year International. [11] [12]

In 2009, the exhibition Farmers Warriors, Builders: the Hidden Life on Ants opened at the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution, containing 40 of Moffett’s images. [4] [13] Moffett is a lecturer for the National Geographic Society [14] and was a speaker for the World Science Festival in 2013. [15] Moffett has appeared multiple times on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Colbert Report. [16] He has also been interviewed in such radio programs as National Geographic’s Weekend Edition, [17] "Fresh Air" and other NPR programs, [18] [19] West Coast Live!, [20] Voice of America, [21] CBS Sunday Morning, [22] and Living on Earth. [23]

The ant species Pheidole moffetti from French Guiana was named after him by Edward O. Wilson in 2003. [24]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. O. Wilson</span> American biologist, naturalist, and writer (1929–2021)

Edward Osborne WilsonForMemRS was an American biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist known for developing the field of sociobiology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Lovejoy</span> American ecologist (1941–2021)

Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III was an American ecologist who was President of the Amazon Biodiversity Center, a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and a university professor in the Environmental Science and Policy department at George Mason University. Lovejoy was the World Bank's chief biodiversity advisor and the lead specialist for environment for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as senior advisor to the president of the United Nations Foundation. In 2008, he also was the first Biodiversity Chair of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment to 2013. Previously he served as president of the Heinz Center since May 2002. Lovejoy introduced the term biological diversity to the scientific community in 1980. He was a past chair of the Scientific Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the multibillion-dollar funding mechanism for developing countries in support of their obligations under international environmental conventions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Earle</span> American marine biologist and lecturer

Sylvia Alice Earle is an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ant colony</span> Underground lair where ants live, eat, and tend eggs

An ant colony is a population of a single ant species able to maintain its complete lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, communal, and efficiently organized and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. The typical colony consists of one or more egg-laying queens, numerous sterile females and, seasonally, many winged sexual males and females. In order to establish new colonies, ants undertake flights that occur at species-characteristic times of the day. Swarms of the winged sexuals depart the nest in search of other nests. The males die shortly thereafter, along with most of the females. A small percentage of the females survive to initiate new nests.

Robert Hale Ives Goddard III is a linguist and a curator emeritus in the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. He is widely considered the leading expert on the Algonquian languages and the larger Algic language family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonard Carmichael</span> American educator and psychologist

Leonard Carmichael was an American educator and psychologist. In addition, he became the seventh secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1953.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Geller</span> American astronomer

Margaret J. Geller is an American astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Her work has included pioneering maps of the nearby universe, studies of the relationship between galaxies and their environment, and the development and application of methods for measuring the distribution of matter in the universe.

Caryl Parker Haskins (1908–2001) was an American scientist, author, inventor, philanthropist, governmental adviser and pioneering entomologist in the study of ant biology. Along with Franklin S. Cooper, he founded the Haskins Laboratories, a private, non-profit research laboratory, in 1935. He was professor at Union College. He was also on the boards of non-profits such as the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Smithsonian Institution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Charles Bequaert</span> American naturalist

Joseph Charles Bequaert was an American naturalist of Belgian origin, born 24 May 1886 in Torhout (Belgium) and died on 12 January 1982 in Amherst, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cristián Samper</span>

Cristián Samper is a Colombian-American tropical biologist specializing in conservation biology and environmental policy. He is the Managing Director and Leader of Nature Solutions at the Bezos Earth Fund. He served as President and CEO of WCS from 2012 to 2022. He was the Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, the world's largest natural history collection, from 2003 to 2012, and served as acting Secretary of the Smithsonian from 2007 to 2008, the first Latin American to hold the position. In April 2015, Samper was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Robert Dunn is a biologist, writer and professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. He has written several books and his science essays have appeared at magazines such as BBC Wildlife Magazine, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic and others. He has become known for efforts to involve the public as citizen scientists in arthropod surveys and bacterial flora studies. His projects include studies of belly button biodiversity, mites that live on human faces, ants in backyards, and fungi and bacteria in houses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lists of organisms by population</span>

This is a collection of lists of organisms by their population. While most of the numbers are estimates, they have been made by the experts in their fields. Species population is a science falling under the purview of population ecology and biogeography. Individuals are counted by census, as carried out for the piping plover; using the transect method, as done for the mountain plover; and beginning in 2012 by satellite, with the emperor penguin being first subject counted in this manner.

Don Ellis Wilson is an American zoologist. His main research field is mammalogy, especially the group of bats which he studied in 65 countries around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paleobiology Database</span> Online resource about fossil animals, plants, and microorganisms

The Paleobiology Database is an online resource for information on the distribution and classification of fossil animals, plants, and microorganisms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shankar Vedantam</span> American journalist, writer, and science correspondent

Shankar Vedantam is an American journalist, writer, and science correspondent. His reporting focuses on human behavior and the social sciences. He is best known for his Hidden Brain family of products: book, podcast, and radio program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vicki Funk</span> American botanist (1947–2019)

Vicki Ann Funk was an American botanist and curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, known for her work on members of the composite family (Asteraceae) including collecting plants in many parts of the world, as well as her synthetic work on phylogenetics and biogeography.

John F. Ross is an American historian and author. He is the recipient of the 2011 Fort Ticonderoga Award for Contributions to American History.

Walter John Emil Kress is an American botanist and the vice-president for science at the National Museum of Natural History. He currently holds the appointment (2010) as the Director of the Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet at the Smithsonian and is the former Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.

Abigail Marsh is a psychologist and neuroscientist who works as a professor at Georgetown University's Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program, where she is the director of the Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience.

Nicholas Pyenson is a paleontologist and the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. He is the author of numerous popular science works including the book Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures.

References

  1. "Academics". www.doctorbugs.com. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  2. Griffin, Nicholas (2011). "Before the swarm". The Atavist Magazine. Retrieved 2019-04-13.
  3. "Photographer Mark Moffett Biography -". National Geographic. 25 April 2016. Archived from the original on August 21, 2019.
  4. 1 2 "AntLab - Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History". naturalhistory.si.edu.
  5. "Poynter Fellowship: Mark Moffett". Office of Public Affairs & Communications. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  6. Ariely, D., Tim Folger, T. (2012) The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 318
  7. "The Lowell Thomas Award - Discoveries in the Treetops". explorers.org.
  8. "2010 Winners of the National Outdoor Book Awards". www.noba-web.org.
  9. "UC Press honored with five PROSE Awards". www.ucpress.edu.
  10. "1992 Photo Contest, Science & Technology, Stories, Honorable mention". www.worldpressphoto.org.
  11. "First Place - Science/Natural History Picture Story". www.poy.org.
  12. "Third Place - News". www.poy.org.
  13. "Event Calendar | Washington Post | Washington, DC". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2010-11-21. Retrieved 2019-01-26.
  14. "Speaker's Bureau". Archived from the original on 2010-04-28. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
  15. "The Moth StorySLAM: Natural Selection". World Science Festival.
  16. "Mark Moffett". IMDb.
  17. "Nat Geo Weekend Edition". National Geographic Society . Archived from the original on 2010-03-29. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
  18. "Ants: 'A Global Safari With A Cast Of Trillions'". NPR.org.
  19. "The Savage, Beautiful World of Army Ants". NPR.org.
  20. "Show Archive". www.wcl.org. West Coast Live!. Archived from the original on April 12, 2004.
  21. "Farmers, Warriors, Builders: The Hidden Life of Ants". VOA. 2 November 2009.
  22. CBS Sunday Morning
  23. International, Living on Earth / World Media Foundation / Public Radio. "Living on Earth: May 13, 1994". Living on Earth.
  24. Wilson, Edward O. (2003). French Guiana Pheidole in the New World: A Dominant, Hyperdiverse Ant Genus. Volume 1. Harvard University Press. p. 463.