So in the roller coaster that is 2016, I am very happy to announce that I have a NSF funded grant. Seth Newsome (U. of New Mexico) and I are continuing my work with deep-sea wood falls. The official title is “The energetic assembly of biological communities: a test with Read more…
Very excited to see the third paper from the multi-year, wood-fall research project now in press. The paper focuses on a well-known macroecological pattern, the abundance-occupancy relationship. Simply, we find that species that are on average more abundant at any given location or more likely to be found at more Read more…
The Louisiana Board of Regents in conjunction with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) Executive Board is pleased to announce the selection of Dr. Craig McClain as the new Executive Director of LUMCON. McClain serves as the Deputy Director of the Triangle Center for Evolution Medicine and formerly the Assistant Read more…
I along with my former Ph.D. advisor, Michael Rex, have recently published a comprehensive review of species turnover and diversity in the deep-sea benthos. We review patterns and causes of β-diversity in the deep-sea benthos at different spatial scales and for different body sizes. Changes in species composition occurring with depth are Read more…
My latest at Science of the South. Probably one of the best and most important things I’ve ever written. The Unknown Five Scientists Who Saved Science Education in Alabama http://www.scienceofthesouth.com/the-unknown-five-scientists-who-saved-science-education-in-alabama/ On Thursday, December 14th 1989, five Alabama scientists joined together, forming a small line of defense in a battle most Read more…
The second paper from the wood-fall experiments is now in press! You can read my public outreach post on the paper and the major finding at Deep-Sea News. McClain, C., Barry, J., Eernisse, D., Horton, T., Judge, J., Kakui, K., Mah, C., & Warén, A. (2015). Multiple Processes Generate Productivity-Diversity Read more…
My latest piece of public writing, “12 Whirling Facts About Tornadoes,” is now up at Mental Floss. Very excited to be contributing to the great science communication at one of my favorite outlets. The artilce is my first published piece to emerge out of my research for my upcoming book Science of Read more…
This paper continues to be a social media giant. My coauthors and I cracked the Top 100 Altmetric scores for 2015. Sizing Ocean Giants with a current score of 954 is ranked 72 in the list. I could not be happier about this and true testament to hard work of my Read more…
My 70 page, 40 figure, 200+ reference tome on body of all the largest marine megafauna is out. McClain, C.R., M.A. Balk, M.C. Benfield, T.A. Branch, C. Chen, J. Cosgrove, A. Dove, L.C. Gaskins, R.R. Helm, F.G.E. Hochberg,, F.B. Lee, S.E. McMurray, C. Schanche, S.N. Stone, and A.D. Thaler (2015) Read more…
Craig McClain, Deep Sea News blogger and marine biologist, asked his students to collect size data on ocean giants and tweet at the same time. Here’s why… McClain, a Duke University professor and founder of the blog Deep Sea News, designed a class this past fall that asked his undergraduate students to Read more…