Nationality United States Fields Biology | Name Christopher McAllister | |
Residence Broken Bow, Oklahoma, United States Institutions Southeastern Oklahoma State University McCurtain County Campus in Idabel Alma mater University of North Texas
Arkansas State University
University of Arkansas at Little Rock | ||
Chris Thomas McAllister (born July 26, 1955 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas) to the late physician James T. McAllister Jr., MD (1922-2013) and homemaker Mary Ellen Kober (1932-) is an American herpetologist and parasitologist and a tenured Professor of Biology at Eastern Oklahoma State College McCurtain County Campus in Idabel. His research spans parasites of fishes, amphibians, and reptiles and small mammals, especially their helminth and coccidial parasites. He has collaborated on millipeds and centipedes with Rowland Shelley (retired, North Carolina State Museum of Natural History), bats with Robert Dowler and Loren Ammerman (Angelo St. University), amphibians and reptiles with Stanley E. Trauth (Arkansas State University), fishes with Henry W. Robison (retired, Southern Arkansas University) and parasitology with Chuck Bursey (retired, Pennsylvania State University) and Donald W. Duszynski (retired, Univ. of New Mexico). In his parasite research, he has primarily studied microscopic apicomplexan parasites known as coccidians.
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Grandparents
Maternal grandparents were Chris Kober and the former Winifred Hazel Lewis (1910-1996) of Little Rock, Arkansas. Paternal grandparents were James T. McAllister, Sr. (1899-20??), and the former Clara Leigh Hicks (1901-1994) of Gurdon, Arkansas.
Early life
When Chris was born, he was interestingly one of two infants born that morning at Davis Hospital in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, with two fully erupted lower incisors (natal teeth)! Natal teeth occur in about one in every 2,000-3,000 births, according to the National Institutes of Health. McAllister grew up in Pine Bluff learning to fish and duck hunt with his father and grandfather Kober and attended first grade in a private Lutheran School there. The family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he continued his primary education. On most weekends, his father and he would go fishing at Lake Conway or Harris Brake Lake where they would always catch their limit of bream (=sunfishes) or crappie. Most of the time he spent playing football or riding bicycles several miles to Brodie Creek to fish with his friends from the Gilman Road neighborhood or with his first cousin, James V. Rippy.
Education
McAllister attended Little Rock, Arkansas, schools as a young boy, most notably Wilson Elementary (1962-1968) and Southwest Jr. High School (1968-1970). Even at this early age in his educational career, he had developed an interest in amphibians and reptiles (mostly snakes) since his maternal grandfather (Chris Kober, 1901-1968) had first introduced him to the wilds of Arkansas. McAllister graduated in May 1973 from Parkview High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. He attended the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville in Fall of 1973 and immediately transferred to the University of Arkansas-Little Rock (UALR) in Spring 1974 to help improve upon his first semester grades. McAllister earned a B.S. in biology in 1978 from UALR. Then, he earned a M.S. in Biology in 1981 from Arkansas State University (1981) under the late V. Rick McDaniel and his thesis project was entitled "Ecological Observations of the Eastern Collared Lizard, Crotaphytus collaris collaris (Say), in Northcentral Arkansas", and completed his Ph.D. in 1989 at the University of North Texas under Lloyd C. Fitzpatrick and his doctoral disseration was on "Systematics of Coccidian Parasites (Apicomplexa) from Amphibians and Reptiles in Northcentral Texas." He held a postdoctoral fellowship in Internal Medicine (Diabetes Research) from 1990 to 1995 under John H. Johnson and Roger H. Unger funded by Merit Review study entitled, "Glucose Transport in Islet Function" and NIH funded study entitled, "Molecular Mechanisms of B-cell Dysfunction/Destruction", in the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Dallas, Texas.
Research
McAllister has produced more than 400 publications in his 35-year career, with his first publication in 1978.
Parasitology
As of 2015, McAllister had named about 75 parasites new to science (many were coccidians with the late renown coccidiologist Steve J. Upton, 1953-2010), including 'Eimeria trauthi' and 'Eimeria robisoni' which he named for frequent collaborators Stanley E. Trauth and Henry W. Robison. Three parasites have been named in his honor: a trematode, Allopharynx macallisteri (Journal of the Helminthological Society of Washington 65:16-20, 1998) and tapeworm, Oochoristica macallisteri (Folia Parasitologica 43:293-296, 1996) in recognition of Chris McAllister's contributions to parasitology in amphibians and reptiles; and a protozoan parasite of the genus Protoopalina (Systematic Parasitology 32:141-147, 1995). In 1997-98, he served as President of the Southwestern Association of Parasitologists from 1997-1998. He parasitological research focuses primarily on coccidians of small mammals (shrews, moles, and rodents), amphibians, and reptiles and helminths of herpetofauna and fishes. McAllister is listed among active worldwide coccidiologists by D. W. Duszynski et al. (2000) The Coccidia of the World (http://biology.unm.edu/coccidia/coccidiologists.htm). His latest interests have been in fish parasitology, describing new species of digenetic trematodes and providing new records on helminth parasites of fishes from Arkansas and Oklahoma with Donald Cloutman (retired, Kansas), H. W. Robison and T. J. Fayton (Univ. of Southern Mississippi), among others.
Herpetology
McAllister has had a distinguished career in herpetology. He is listed by R. Altig in K. Adler (ed, 1989) Contributions to the History of Herpetology, Academic Lineages of Doctoral Degrees in Herpetology. McAllister had a fascination with amphibians and reptiles since he was a child in Little Rock, Arkansas. "I used to bring harmless snakes home and my mom would freak out," said McAllister in an Interview. The late James R. Dixon (1928-2015), Texas icon in herpetology called McAllister one of the largest contributors to the herpetology of Texas alongside the late Hobart Muir Smith, and Stanley E. Trauth et al. demonstrated that McAllister ranked #2 for numbers of publications on Arkansas herpetofauna In 1995, he was bitten at home on his right hand by a captive W. Diamondback Rattlesnake, which required a 5-day hospitalization in the ICU at Methodist Hospital in Dallas, which included infusion of 27 vials of CroFab antivenin provided by the Dallas Zoo. "It was my fault," said McAllister, afterwards the snake was released to the wild by a colleague. McAllister continues to publish papers on geographic distribution and life history of herpetofauna in the journal Herpetological Review, where he has over 150 publications.
Mammalogy
He has published at least 30 papers on mammals, mostly on coccidial and helminth parasites of bats but also on armadillos, rodents, and various other groups.
Myriapodology
He has published at least 25 papers on millipeds and 14 papers on centipedes. He is listed among the notable living myriapodologists.
Natural History and Ecology
McAllister has a keen interest in the natural history and ecology of both invertebrates (leeches, hemipterans) and vertebrates of the Ark-La-Tex region. He has collaborated on vertebrate records with many colleagues with most recent papers appearing in the Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science (http://libinfo.uark.edu/aas/issues/2013v67/v67a28.pdf; http://libinfo.uark.edu/aas/issues/2014v68/v68a22.pdf).
Teaching
McAllister teaches across many areas of biology (excluding botany, he is a dedicated zoologist!) and nursing courses in human anatomy, physiology and microbiology. Prior to teaching at Eastern Oklahoma State College-Idabel where he started in Fall of 2010, he had taught at Chadron State College (NE, 2006-2008), Angelo State University (2005–06), Texas Wesleyan University (1995-1996), several Texas community colleges (1998-2000) and spent five years (2000-2005) teaching upper level biology courses at Texas A&M University at Texarkana.
Arkansas Academy of Science
McAllister has been a member of the Arkansas Academy of Science since 1978. He gave his first oral presentation at the 62nd annual meeting in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in April 1978 on Diving physiology of water snakes, an undergraduate study directed by Dennis A. Baeyens (retired, Univ. of Arkansas at Little Rock). He held the office of Managing Editor from 2003-2006. To date, he has published more than 58 papers in the AAS publication, Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science.
Family
McAllister has three siblings (girls), four children and is married to Monique A. Harsch.