Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

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August 2024

Archives for August 2024

Adams Expands Research Flock with Latvian Fulbright Experience

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Colton Adams, a 2023 graduate in honors ecology and evolutionary biology, continued his academic journey as one of UT’s 13 Fulbright Scholars for 2023–2024, contributing to the Big Orange reputation as a top producer of these accomplished students. 

Adams traveled to the University of Latvia, in the city of Riga, to collaborate with the zoology and animal ecology group there, investigating questions about behavioral ecology and acoustic communication in mixed-species flocks of birds. He found himself immediately taken with the Eastern European landscape.

U.S. National Science Foundation Awards UT $18M to Study Factors That Lead to Pandemics

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Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Nina Fefferman became a mathematician because she loves puzzles. She’s just been awarded $18 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation to solve one puzzle that has the potential to change the world: how, when and why an infection in a population will spread, or cause an epidemic or pandemic, rather than dying out.

NSF CAREER Award Expands Ecological Research for Kivlin Lab

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NSF CAREER Award Expands Ecological Research for Kivlin Lab

Four researchers pose together for an outside photo surrounded by greenery
Associate Professor Stephanie Kivlin, second from left, and research colleagues Jen Rudgers (University of New Mexico), Aimee Classen (University of Michigan), and Lara Souza (University of Oklahoma and a UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology graduate alumnus) pause during field research.

Associate Professor Stephanie Kivlin earned a 2024 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her project proposal “Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Plant-Mycorrhizal Fungal Symbioses at Continental Scale.” The work will help build a greater understanding of ways that plant life reacts to changes in global conditions.

The Kivlin Lab, within the UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB), researches the drivers of distributions of mycorrhizal fungi—fungi that have symbiotic relationships with the roots of many plants—and how global change may affect them and their interactions with these plants. The CAREER project will expand the lab team’s focus to study foundational trees of North America.

“This CAREER award is pivotal to provide support to map the current and future distribution of plants and mycorrhizal fungi and the outcome of symbiosis throughout the continental US for the first time,” said Kivlin.

Headshot photo
Stephanie Kivlin

Global change is forcing organisms to shift their biogeographical ranges and change their seasonal activities—affecting their growth, survival, and reproduction. Microbial symbionts can modulate the response of host organisms to global change, but it isn’t known how interactions among hosts and these symbionts shift as conditions change planetwide.

Researchers will collect fungi from the roots of 10 foundational tree species across the Eastern US for four years and sequence long-term herbarium samples to understand historical fungal communities. They will address how these trees and their mycorrhizal fungal symbionts may become decoupled over space and time as plants and fungi shift ranges. 

“We will leverage the USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis database, which involves more than 14,000 locations, to understand how mycorrhizal fungal distributions have shifted since 2001,” said Kivlin. “We will then assess how plants grow, survive, and reproduce with home fungi versus those that are moved to simulate range shifts under global change.”

For students, the grant will enable the development of two Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) focused on this research.

“This research and outreach is collaborative with the Easy as Play initiative, led by EEB Professor Liz Derryberry, through which we will engage dozens of middle school students in plant-mycorrhizal fungal research and training,” said Kivlin.

CAREER award funding will also support graduate student Ella Segal in the Kivlin lab, plus a postdoctoral researcher and a technician.

“Graduate students from EEB will also be engaged in CUREs,” said Kivlin. “They will gain valuable pedagogical knowledge in experiential learning, which will prepare them for the workforce upon graduation.”

By Randall Brown

UT Faculty, Students Sharing Ecology Research

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UT Faculty, Students Sharing Ecology Research

Close up photo of foliage

Ecologists from around the world learned about research conducted at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, during the annual Ecological Society of America meeting this month.

About 20 oral presentations plus poster sessions featured UT faculty and students’ findings in areas including climate change, biodiversity, ecosystems, symbiotic relationships, and species that range from Appalachia to Africa. The ESA meeting in Long Beach, California, Aug. 4-9, drew around 3,000 attendees.

The UT presenters include half a dozen faculty members from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB): Distinguished Service Professor Paul Armsworth; Research Professor Richard Norby; Associate Professors Orou Gaoue, Xingli Giam, and Stephanie Kivlin; Lecturer Amanda Benoit; and Adjunct Lecturer Joseph Edwards. 

“The ESA annual meeting is an outstanding opportunity for ecologists to learn about new work, network, and meet up with collaborators and colleagues, and is always so inspiring,” said Professor Jen Schweitzer, head of the EEB department. “Everyone attending always returns with new ideas and so much excitement about their research and next directions. ESA also does a great job of providing diverse professional development opportunities to help attendees expand their toolboxes of professional and discipline-based skills. I am thrilled there was such great attendance this year!”

The UT Institute of Agriculture had two faculty members present their research, Professor Jennifer DeBruyn and Assistant Professor Mark Wilber, and affiliates of the National Institute for Modeling Biological Systems (NIMBioS) also were delivering talks at ESA’s meeting.

Two EEB researchers received awards from ESA this year. PhD student Alivia Nytko was honored for her 2023 ESA poster presentation on research that suggests plant rarity might be an evolutionary adaptation. EEB Professor Michael Blum, associate dean for research and creative activity in the College of Arts and Sciences, received recognition for an outstanding ecological research paper, which focused on rapid plant evolution in how ecosystems respond to global change.

By Amy Beth Miller

Burghardt honored by Animal Behavior Society

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Animal behavior captivated Gordon Burghardt as a boy, and over more than half a century at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, his interdisciplinary research advanced ethology in areas including animal play, social behavior, communication, reptile behavior, enrichment, and animal cognitive abilities.

The Animal Behavior Society (ABS) recognized his outstanding lifetime achievement by awarding Burghardt the 2024 Distinguished Animal Behaviorist Award during its annual meeting in late June.

Simberloff Receives Honorary Doctorate

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Simberloff Receives Honorary Doctorate

Tel Aviv President Ariel Porat, from left, congratulates University of Tennessee Professor Daniel Simberloff, along with TAU Rector Mark Shtaif on stage while in black and red regalia
Tel Aviv President Ariel Porat, from left, congratulates University of Tennessee Professor Daniel Simberloff, along with TAU Rector Mark Shtaif. TAU presented an honorary doctorate on May 30, 2024, to Simberloff, the Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Science in UT’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The honor cites Simberloff’s “legendary achievements as an ecologist, conservation biologist and invasive species expert.”

by Amy Beth Miller

Daniel Simberloff’s contributions to ecology and conservation biology as a researcher, educator, and mentor received recognition this spring from Tel Aviv University (TAU).

Simberloff, the Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, received an honorary doctorate during a May 30 ceremony at TAU. The certificate cites Simberloff’s “legendary achievements as an ecologist, conservation biologist and invasive species expert.”

Simberloff is the first ecologist to receive an honorary degree from Tel Aviv University, and the university also asked him to open a symposium that week that brought together scientists from across Israel studying biological invasions and government policymakers. 

Simberloff first served as a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University in 1996 and before that had co-advised a TAU doctoral student, with whom he continued to collaborate. He also was involved in planning for the university’s Steinhardt Museum of Natural History. 

The honorary degree presented to Simberloff notes that his work “is studied by virtually every undergraduate student in the field worldwide” and is “helping to prevent extinctions and protect biodiversity.”

“It’s really gratifying,” he said of the honor, “because it’s a nation with a lot of ecologists doing world-class work and publishing in all the leading journals, and people working right in my major area of biological invasions and much concerned with conservation in a very challenging environment.”

The honorary degrees were presented during the annual meeting of TAU’s Board of Governors, which includes representatives from around the world.

The eight other honorees included the co-founder of WhatsApp and the first Jewish woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as others recognized for academics, contributions to the arts, activism, and entrepreneurship.

During the ceremony, TAU President Ariel Porat said, “Even in wartime, we must maintain our way of life. Especially for a university, it is crucial to continue researching, teaching, and contributing to society. Today’s honorary degrees ceremony shows that the pursuit of science and knowledge never stops.”

Simberloff’s contributions to understanding the natural world also were recognized in August 2023 by the British Ecological Society (BES). The honorary membership he received in the BES is the highest honor it bestows, recognizing exceptional contribution at the international level to the generation, communication, and promotion of ecological knowledge and solutions.

McGill University awarded Simberloff an honorary Doctor of Science degree in June 2023, calling him a pioneer and renowned scholar in ecology and conservation biology. “Studying the susceptibility of ecosystems to biological invasions years before the phenomenon became a thriving subdiscipline, Simberloff is a world leader in this research area,” McGill said in honoring him.