Jim began working in the Margulis Lab as an animator and digital content creator.  He created the animation for the Margulis movie, Eukaryosis - The Origin of Nucleated Cells.  For the past three semesters, he has been a teaching assistant in the Margulis lab. He is also the webmaster for the Margulis Lab. You may contact him with corrections, complaints, or comments about the website.

Jim MacAllister is now working on his Masters in Evolution Geography in the Department of Geosciences. His Masters studies contrast the “modern synthesis” (neodarwinism) which was developed in the decade after 1936 and has nearly monopolized evolutionary thought for the past 70 years with an alternative: organisms and their environment evolve as communities with varying degrees of integration. Integration may involve sharing space to fusion of symbionts into new chimeric organisms (speciation).

Communities, as systems, exist at different scales and are nested within larger systems. At the microscopic end of the scale are bacterial  communities and integrated bacterial communities (eukaryotes) and at the top of the scale is the Earth system, Gaia.

Working with fellow grad student, Sean Faulkner, the duo have converted the 36 Environmental Evolution slide/tape lectures into the Digital InterActive Learning Series (DIALS) on DVD.  Jim continues this work producing new DIALS as opportunites present themselves.

Jim is one of the authors of Spirochete round bodies: syphilis, Lyme disease & AIDS: resurgence of “the great imitator”? published in the journal Symbiosis in January 2009.

Prior to his work for the Margulis laboratory, Jim spent thirty years working in all aspects of videotape production, both creative and technical.  He independently produced programs on an eclectic mix of subjects. As part of a creative team with Ernest Urvater, he directed Berthe Morisot - The Forgotten Impressionist that was reviewed as "one of the best art history videos yet produced" by Art New England magazine.  Their documentary on the problems of plastic pollution in the marine environment, Troubled Waters, was shown nationally on PBS and Age of Polymers was a documentary on groundbreaking “new materials” research at the Polymer Science and Engineering Department of the University of Massachusetts.

Jim’s work in medical and scientific video production was recognized with top honors from the Health Science Communications Assn., the Society for Technical Communication (Award of Distinguished Technical Communication) and awards from the New England Chapter of the American Medical Writers Association, among others.

Jim keeps his hand in video production working for the Emily Dickinson Museum, Picture Book Theatre at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and co-producing the Happy Valley News Hour, a local Amherst fake newscast with noted producer director Christine Stephens. 

Jim is a member of the President’s Circle of the Massachusetts Academy of Science and a Fellow of the LInnean Society of London.

Jim grew up on a farm outside of Keene, NH and feels most at home tramping the woods.

Contact:  jimmymac at geo.umass.edu  or  413-545-3223

Jim in his Seagull hang glider looking for thermals back in his younger crazier days.

On a recent visit to Oueen Mary University of London. (left to right)  Jeff Duckett; Vivian Moses; James MacAllister (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); Philip John (University of Reading); Martin Brasier (University of Oxford); Lynn Margulis (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); John Allen; Carol Allen; Brenda Thake (Queen Mary University of London. The pub in the background is the Greedy Cow.

Updated 7/07/2009

You are listening to "By The Virtue Of It"

words by Elisee Recluse 1869

music and performance by Heather Mumford