Corrie Moreau
Professor, Richard Gilder Graduate School
- Email:
- [email protected]
Dr. Corrie Moreau is joining the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) as the Dean of Collections and a Curator and Professor in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology. Prior to joining AMNH she served as a Senior Associate Dean in the College of Agriculture and Life Science at Cornell University. She was also the Moser Endowed Professor of Entomology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at and Director and Head Curator of the Cornell University Insect Collection. Before moving to Cornell, she was the Robert A. Pritzker Director of the Integrative Research Center and MacArthur Associate Curator at the Field Museum of Natural History.
Dr. Moreau earned her Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University and for her postdoctoral work was a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Before this she completed her undergraduate and master's degrees at San Francisco State University.
Dr. Moreau’s work focuses on the evolution of species interactions and features a broad range of taxa including insects, plants, fungi, and microbes, especially those that symbiotically associate with social insects. She couples tropical fieldwork with genomic tools to address the origin of species and how symbiotic systems evolve.
She has been a leader in the field of insect phylogenetics, comparative genomic analysis of ant-plant interactions, biogeography and trait evolution, and insect-associated microbiomes to better understand broad-scale evolutionary patterns of life. She has published over 130 scientific papers, including 5 book chapters. In addition to her passion for scientific research, Dr. Moreau is also actively engaged with efforts to promote science communication and increase diversity and inclusion in the sciences.
Dr. Moreau has received numerous awards including being elected a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society in 2021, a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America in 2020, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018, a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016, a National Geographic Explorer in 2014, and highlighted as a Woman of Impact by the National Geographic Society in 2018. In addition, she has one genus and three species named after her!
Education
- Harvard University, PhD, 2007
- San Francisco State University, MSc, 2003
- San Francisco State University, BS, 2000
Research Interests
Research in our lab focuses on the symbiotic factors that drive speciation, adaptation, and evolutionary diversification. We use ants and other insects to tease apart the factors that influence patterns of evolution—the rise of the flowering plants, symbioses ants have with other insects and plants, and their gut-associated microbial community are all potential underlying factors that may have facilitated their ecological dominance in almost all terrestrial ecosystems. In addition we are interested in how biogeography, climate change and invasive ants have and will continue to affect the evolutionary processes that generate and sustain high biological diversity in tropical ecosystems and other habitats. Furthermore we are interested in how we can use molecular methods, next-generation sequencing, and comparative genomics with field-based research to study biodiversity across scales.
Publications
Teaching Experience
- Professor, Division of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History
- Professor, Departments of Entomology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University
- Professor, Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago