Welcome to the Dr. Mac Research Collaborative

The McAllister (Mac) Lab is a collaborative effort among Dr. Mac and several colleagues (see who we are below) aimed at investigating the protozoan (myxozoan, coccidian) and helminth parasites of vertebrates, particularly freshwater (non-game) fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and select small mammals.  Dr. Mac and other colleagues are also particularly interested in biodiversity, endemic species and the geographic distribution of millipeds, centipedes, crayfishes, leeches, hemipterans, fishes, and amphibians and reptiles of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Colleagues are experts in taxonomy, natural history, ecology, electron and light microscopy and molecular biology.  We welcome input from colleagues in entomology, ecto- and endoparasitology, protozoology, ichthyology, herpetology, and mammalogy.  Our most recent work has involved working in the area of fish parasitology with several colleagues (see below) and new species have and/or are being described from Arkansas and Oklahoma fishes.

Who We Are
Chris T. McAllister, Ph.D. earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock (1978), a M.S. in Biology from Arkansas State University in 1981 (under Dr. Rick McDaniel), and a Ph.D. in Ecology (1989) from the University of North Texas (under Dr. Lloyd Fitzpatrick). Dr. Mac did a postdoctoral fellowship in Internal Medicine at the VA Medical Center-Dallas from 1990-1995. He earned tenure from EOSC in Spring 2015 and is currently Professor of Biology. Chris has been involved in various aspects of biological research since 1978 and published over 500 papers in the scientific literature. He has had long-term collaborations with Drs. Henry Robison (retired, Sherwood, AR), Charles Bursey (retired), Bruce Conn (Berry College) and Stanley Trauth (retired, Morrilton, AR). More recent work has involved various projects with Steve Chordas, III (Ohio St.), T. J. Fayton (US Fish & Wildlife Service, PA), Drs. Don Cloutman (retired, Burdett, KS), Mike Forstner (Texas State Univ.), Vasyl Tkach (Univ. North Dakota), Charles Criscione (TAMU), Mike Barger (Peru St. Coll.), Lance Durden (Georgia Southern Univ.), Dennis Richardson (Quinnipiac Univ.), Scott Seville (Univ. Wyoming), Dagmara Motriuk-Smith (Univ. Wyoming), Don Duszynski (retired), Tomáš Scholz (Czech Republic), Anindo Choudbury (St. Norbert College), Chris Whipps (SUNY-ESC) and the Dallas Zoo reptile department.  

Recent News
Seven papers were recently accepted in Vol. 71 (2017) of the Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science. Submissions have been made to the Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of Science for 2017. We also recently had papers appear in Comparative Parasitology and Systematic Parasitology as follows: 
McAllister, C. T., D. G. Cloutman, H. W. Robison, and T. J. Fayton. 2017. Gill Flukes (Monogenoidea: Dactylogyrida) from the Rainbow Darter, Etheostoma caeruleum (Perciformes: Percidae): New Distributional Records for Arkansas, U.S.A. Comp. Parasitol. 84:189-193.
Fayton, T. J., A. Choudhury, C. T. McAllister, and H. W. Robison. 2017. Three new species of Plagioporus Stafford, 1904 from darters (Perciformes: Percidae), with a redescription of Plagioporus boleosomi (Pearse, 1924) Peters, 1957. Syst. Parasitology 94:159-182.