• Faculty
• Instructors
• Research Faculty
• Professors Emeriti
• Staff
• Courtesy Appointments
• Research Focal Areas

Christopher L. Parkinson Ph.D., University of Louisville Office: BIO 424 Phone: 407-823-4847 Email: cparkins@mail.ucf.edu Website: http://biology.ucf.edu/~clp/

April, 2005: Pedro Quintana-Ascencio in collaboration with Chris Parkinson received a research grant in the amount of $127,691

Research Interests

Dr. Parkinson's research program focuses on understanding, describing and conserving the World’s biodiversity, both at the organismal and molecular levels. The foundation of his research lies in molecular phylogenetics thereby using genetic material (DNA) to hypothesize the evolutionary history of organisms or gene sequences. He then tries to infer which historical and/or current forces may have led to the organisms present day behavior, distribution, diversity, and ecology. The secondary area of his research program is conservation genetics, which uses genetics to investigate population level processes within threatened and endangered taxa. By utilizing the genetic data, we are able to suggest holistic management strategies to increase a species chance for survival.

Selected Publications

Parkinson, C.L., P. Chippindale, and J. Campbell. Multigene analyses of pitviper phylogeny with comments on their biogeographical history. In G. W. Schuett, M. Höggren and H. W. Greene, eds. Biology of the Vipers. Biol. Sci. Press, Carmel, Indiana. (In press).

Nickrent, D.L., C.L. Parkinson, J.D. Palmer, and R.J. Duff. 2000. Multigene phylogeny of land plants with special reference to Bryophytes and the earliest land plants. Mol. Biol. Evol. 17: 1885-1895.

Palmer, J.D., K.L. Adams, Y. Cho, C.L. Parkinson, Y.-L. Qiu and K. Song. 2000. Dynamic evolution of plant mitochondrial genomes: Mobile genes and introns, and highly variable mutation rates. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 97:6960-6966.

Parkinson, C.L., K.R. Zamudio, and H.W. Greene. 2000. Phylogeography of the pitviper clade Agkistrodon: historical ecology, species status, and conservation of the cantils. Mol. Ecol. 9:411-420

Chaw, S-M., C.L. Parkinson, Y.Cheng, T.M. Vincent, and J.D. Palmer. 2000. Seed plant phylogeny inferred from all three plant genomes: Monophyly of extant Gymnosperms and origin of Gnetales from conifers. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 97:4086-4091.

Parkinson C.L., K.L. Adams, and J.D. Palmer. 1999. Multigene analyses identify the three earliest lineages of extant flowering plants. Current Biology 9:1485-1488.

Parkinson, C. L. 1999. The molecular systematics and biogeography of the subfamily Crotalinae as determined by mtDNA sequences. Copeia 1999(3) pp. 576-586.