Faculty Profiles

Christopher Schneider

Christopher J. Schneider

Associate Professor of Biology
Director, Center for Ecology & Conservation Biology

PhD, University of California at Berkeley, 1993
Areas of interest: ecology, evolution and adaptive diversification of reptiles and amphibians; systematics; population and comparative genomics; tropical biology and conservation
cschneid@bu.edu
(617) 353-5566
http://people.bu.edu/cschneid/Schneider_Lab/Welcome.html

Current Research

Research in my laboratory combines field studies with a variety of molecular genetic and phenotypic analyses to study adaptation, population biology, systematics, biogeography, and speciation of amphibians and reptiles. My current research aims to understand the genetic basis of adaptive variation in color, pattern, and morphology of Anolis lizards in the Caribbean, and the role of population differentiation and local adaptation in speciation. A second line of related research aims to identify the evolutionary and historical processes that structure patterns of tropical biodiversity in a variety of taxa. I welcome students who wish to pursue conceptually similar studies in ecology, evolution, or conservation biology.

Courses Taught

  • BI 107 Introductory Biology I
  • BI 309 Evolution
  • BI 581/582 Seminar in Biology

Selected Publications

  • Schneider CJ. (2008).Exploiting genomic resources in studies of speciation and adaptive radiation of lizards in the genus Anolis. Integrative and Comparative Biology 48:520-526.
  • Schneider CJ, Williams SE. (2005). Effects of Quaternary Climate Change on Rainforest Diversity: Insights from Spatial Analyses of Species and Genes in Australia’s Wet Tropics. In E. Bermingham, C. Dick, and C. Moritz, editors, Tropical Rainforests: Past, Present, and Future. University of Chicago Press.
  • Bossuyt F, Meegaskumbura M, Beenaerts N, Gower DJ, Pethiyagoda R, Roelants K, Mannaert A, Wilkinson M, Bahir MM, Manamendra-Arachchi K, Ng PKL, Schneider CJ, Oomen OV, Milinkovitch MC. (2004). Local endemism within the Western Ghats – Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot. Science 306, 479-481.
  • Graham CJ, Ron SR, Santos JC, Schneider CJ, Moritz C. (2004). Integrating phylogenetics and environmental niche models to explore speciation mechanisms in dendrobatid frogs. Evolution 58, 1781-1793.
  • Meegaskumbura M, Bossuyt F, Pethiyagoda R, Manamendra-Arachchi K, Bahir M, Milinkovitch MC, Schneider CJ. (2002). Sri Lanka: An amphibian hotspot. Science 298, 379.
  • Knox AK, Losos JB, Schneider CJ. (2001). Adaptive radiation versus intraspecific differentiation: Morphological variation in Caribbean Anolis lizards. J. Evol. Biol. 14, 904-909.
  • Moritz C, Patton JL, Schneider CJ, Smith TB. (2000). Diversification of rainforest faunas: An integrated molecular approach. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 31, 533-563.

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