Chris Thomas McAllister
| Chris Thomas McAllister | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 26, 1955 (age 68) Pine Bluff, Arkansas |
| 🏡 Residence | Broken Bow, Oklahoma, United States |
| 🏳️ Nationality | United States |
| 🎓 Alma mater | |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Twitter= | |
Chris Thomas McAllister (born July 26, 1955 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas) to the James T. McAllister Jr. (1922-2013) a medical doctor, and homemaker Mary Ellen Kober (1932-) is an American herpetologist and parasitologist and a professor of Biology at Eastern Oklahoma State College McCurtain County Campus in Idabel.[1] 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).[2] In his parasite research, he has primarily studied microscopic apicomplexan parasites known as coccidians.[3]
Early life[edit]
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. His family briefly lived in Bolivar, Tennessee where his father was employed as a psychiatrist at the State Hospital there. Chris attended elementary school there for a few years and 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, Lake Ouachita or Harris Brake Lake where they would always catch their limit of bream (=sunfishes) or crappie. It was at Lake Ouachita where the family took their annual summer vacation with several other families (Kumpuris, Hoffman, etc.) and camped on the "point". Most of the time he spent playing football or riding bicycles several miles to Brodie Creek to fish with his friends (Bill Luebke, Ron and Don Benton, Ken Lensing) from the Gilman Street neighborhood gang. Chris spent many days with his favorite first cousin, James V. Rippy, now Dr. Rippy, an audiologist practicing in Little Rock.
Notable Injuries[edit]
Chris has always seemed to be prone to injuries. His first memorable one was in Pine Bluff, Arkansas when he was a youngster, where he stepped on a piece of large glass in a ditch while trying to collect crayfishes. Another one occurred at Lake Ouachita when he was a young teen, where he cut his left forearm on a boat tie which required emergency surgery at St. Vincent Hospital with a skin graft. His third memorable injury happened during football practice at Parkview High School when he was in the 11th grade. There during practice he was hit broadside by a larger offensive lineman (Chris, age 17, weighed only 112 lbs) and he broke his radius and ulna requiring surgery to place a pin in the broken bones. His most serious injury occurred at home on father's day, 1996 in DeSoto, Texas, where he was housing a large western diamondback rattlesnake as a research subject. While trying to clean the terrarium with the snake in place, he was bitten on his right hand in the anatomical snuffbox near his radial artery and vein. He was hospitalized at Methodist Hospital in Dallas (see also below Herpetology) where he was housed in the cardiac care unit for 3 days. There he received 27 vials of antivenom and he was discharged after a week's stay with future major rehab needed on his hand. Another injury occurred when he was attending the AAS meeting at Henderson State University in April 2008. There he slipped on a walkway with some shoddy (unlabeled hazardous) brickwork tripped and fell on his left side, injuring his shoulder. He was admitted to St. Vincent Hospital where he received surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff as well as a broken proximal humerus and ball and socket. A few months later, he was readmitted for outpatient surgery to remove scar tissue from this injury. His latest injury occurred in April 2015 when he fell about 20 feet off a ladder and landed hard on his back. He suffered several broken ribs and other internal injuries that were never diagnosed.
Education[edit]
Chris' first class (1961) was in the First Lutheran School in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. McAllister then attended Little Rock, Arkansas, and Bolivar, Tennessee schools as a young boy, most notably Bolivar Elementary and 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 attended Parkview High School in Little Rock, Arkansas as a freshman in 1970 and unofficially graduated in May 1973. To make up for an algebra credit he failed, Chris had to attend summer school at Parkview High in summer 1973 where he was allowed to take World History, made an A and received his official diploma. He attended the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville in Fall of 1973 and went to school there "just for fun." He immediately transferred to the University of Arkansas-Little Rock (UALR) in Spring 1974 to help improve upon his miserable 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 Dr. 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 Dr. 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 Drs. 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[edit]
McAllister has produced more than 400 publications in his 35-year career, with his first publication in 1978. Most of his publications have appeared in Journal of Parasitology, Systematic Parasitology, Southwestern Naturalist, Herpetological Review, Texas Journal of Science, Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science, and Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Science. He contributes yearly to Herpetological Review by submitting papers on geographic distribution and life history notes.
Parasitology[edit]
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.[4] He parasitological research focuses primarily on coccidians of small mammals (shrews, moles, and rodents), amphibians, and reptiles and helminths of herpetofauna and fishes.[3] 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[edit]
McAllister has had a distinguished career in herpetology.[5][6] 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.[7] 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,[6] and Stanley E. Trauth et al. demonstrated that McAllister ranked #2 for numbers of publications on Arkansas herpetofauna[8] In 1996, he was bitten at home on his right hand by a captive W. Diamondback Rattlesnake, which required a 7-day hospitalization in the CCU 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.[7] 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[edit]
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[edit]
He has published at least 25 papers on millipeds and 14 papers on centipedes. He is listed among the notable living myriapodologists.[9]
Natural History and Ecology[edit]
McAllister has a keen interest in the natural history and ecology of both invertebrates (leeches, hemipterans, ticks, fleas, mites, chiggers) and vertebrates of the Ark-La-Tex region. He, along with long-time colleague Dr. Henry W. Robison (retired Professor Emeritus), have teamed up on studying the endemic biota of Arkansas and Oklahoma with papers appearing in the Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science, Texas Journal of Science, and Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Science. 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[edit]
McAllister teaches across many areas of biology (excluding botany, he is a dedicated zoologist!) and nursing courses in human anatomy, physiology and microbiology.[4] 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. He was recently nominated for a teaching award from the Oklahoma Medal for Excellence in Teaching and Administration and the award will be announced in the spring of 2016.
Arkansas Academy of Science[edit]
McAllister has been a member of the Arkansas Academy of Science (AAS) 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 plans to attend the 100th annual meeting of the AAS at Fayetteville in early April 2016 and give several papers and posters. 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. He is planning to attend the 100th anniversary meeting at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, where he and coauthors will present 10+ papers or posters.
Hobbies[edit]
Chris goes into the field when possible to collect specimens for his research. He often travels with his close colleagues, Dr. Henry Robison, T.J. Fayton or with his sons, James III and Nikolas. They have had some remarkable and memorable trips in Arkansas and Oklahoma and as a result of those, published several papers, including those describing new species of parasites. He especially likes to collect fish, amphibians, and reptiles for parasite surveys. In addition, he has had a long-time love of thoroughbred horse racing since he was a child. His mother (Ellie) and maternal grandparents (Chris and Hazel) gave him pointers at an early age and he continues to follow the races, especially at his home track, Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He does most of his serious handicapping during special events of racing, including the Dubai World Cup in Meydan, Irish and English stakes races, Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, Breeder's Cup and Triple crown races. His favorite bets are the exacta and win-place but he occasionally will play trifectas, pick 3-4, and daily double.
Family[edit]
McAllister has three siblings (girls), four children and has been married to Monique A. Harsch since 2005.
Personal Web Page[edit]
http://www.ctmcallisterlab.com/
References[edit]
- ↑ Science & Mathematics Faculty & Staff, Eastern Oklahoma State College
- ↑ McAllister, C.T. 2008. Chadron State College: Chris T. McAllister. Newsletter of the 26th annual meeting of the Texas Society of Mammalogists Pp. 8-9.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Donald W. Duszynski, Steve J. Upton, and Lee Couch. 1998. Coccidiologists of the World.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Anonymous. 2006. "NEWS: CSC science professor has several accomplishments". September 6.
- ↑ Front Street Books
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Dixon, J.R. 2014. Amphibians and Reptiles of Texas. Texas A&M University Press. 3rd Ed. 447 pg.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Haag, J. 2008. "News: Professor's passion leads to discovery". February 15.
- ↑ Trauth, S. E., H. W. Robison, and M. V. Plummer. 2004. The Amphibians and Reptiles of Arkansas.University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville. xviii + 421 pp.
- ↑ Shelley, R. Myriapodologists-Living. The Myriapoda (Millipeds, Centipedes) Featuring the North American Fauna.[not in citation given]
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