Exemplar Research Questions
The following list highlights examples of current research interests among faculty in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who are who are interested in recruiting graduate students for entry in August 2026. Faculty members have provided brief descriptions of their research interests along with exemplar research questions that they or their students might pursue.
This list is not exhaustive and may change based on funding availability. Other faculty members may be recruiting students if new funding becomes available, and those listed here may also consider students whose interests differ from the topics described. We have prepared this list to illustrate for prospective students the diversity of research areas represented in our department, spanning conservation, macroevolution, global change ecology, molecular genetics, biology education, systematics, microbial ecology, plant ecology and evolution, animal behavior, functional anatomy and many other topics.
Profiles of all faculty can be found on the EEB faculty page, and the exemplar research questions of each recruiting faculty member are listed below.
All graduate applicants to the department are required to contact and discuss their application with a potential faculty mentor before submitting it. We strongly encourage students to reach out to faculty whose research interests align with their own as early as possible, and well in advance of the December 1, 2025 application deadline—even if those faculty are not listed here.
- How can large-scale efforts to conserve biodiversity or ecosystem services, which are led by governments or international nonprofits, most effectively complement bottom-up conservation efforts led by local communities?
- How can we design conservation interventions, like protected areas, so they continue to provide benefits for biodiversity and ecosystem services in the face of future climate and land use change?
- Using evolutionary quantitative genetic models, how might one aspect of morphology affect the potential evolutionary response of another morphology in a taxon?
- How does genetic covariance between morphologies within organisms relate to shared developmental processes and evolutionary potential?
- How is the distribution of trait genetic covariances structured among closely related taxa? How might selection regimes explored through phylogenetic comparative methods explain this structure?
- How will species range dynamics drive genetic divergence? How do feedbacks reinforce patterns of genetic divergence on the landscape?
- Does contemporary evolution along the gradients of global change alter ecosystem function?
- How does rapid evolution of foundational plants influence coastal marsh accretion and carbon storage?
- How do sociodemographic and ecological conditions shape zoonotic disease risk in counter-urbanizing cities?
- What are the functional roles of parental structures for limiting offspring resource acquisition and are there tradeoffs in these structural investments?
- How can molecular phylogenies illuminate evolutionary processes and refine taxonomic concepts?
- How do we resolve phylogenetic relationships between morphologically austere taxa?
- How can we use natural history collections to study plant biodiversity?
- How do animals use behavior to solve the challenges posed by environmental change, such as urbanization or climate warming?
- How do physical traits, such as body size or morphological structures, limit or shape the evolution of complex communication signals?
- How do social behaviors and habitat structure interact to drive the evolution of learning and performance in communication systems?
- What ecological or evolutionary processes drive the dynamics of trait evolution and lineage diversification in animals?
- What explains the diversity of salamanders in the Southern Appalachians? Is hybridization a creative process for biological diversity?
- How does population variation in plant phenotype affect population structuring of herbivores?
- What role does host breadth play in range size and diversification rate of herbivorous insects?
- How do ecological systems respond to chronic anthropological disturbance?
- What are the demographic consequences of ecological interactions?
- How does local people’s knowledge shape plant-human / culture interactions?
- How can we understand the origins of news species and the links between micro-evolutionary processes and macro-evolutionary patterns?
- How can we understand and predict our social behavior and the evolution of human social complexity?
- How do assembly costs and translation errors shape selection on codon usage and how do they play themselves out in the face of biased mutation and genetic drift?
- Some pathogens replicate intracellularly within hosts and move between host cells through budding or bursting. How does the rate of intracellular replication affect the rates of immune response clearance by the host? How, in turn, does this lead to changes in the survival of the host and transmission of the pathogen between hosts?
- How have animals evolved locomotor strategies to navigate novel biomechanical challenges, such as arboreal canopies, urban landscapes, or unstable substrates?
- How have neuromuscular control systems diversified in response to the evolution of new anatomical structures for locomotion?
- How do animals adjust locomotor mechanics in real time to compensate for limb loss, and how do these adjustments vary among species with different neuromuscular and anatomical constraints?
- How has the evolution of musculoskeletal anatomy shaped, and been shaped by, locomotor performance across species and environments?
- How do animals evaluate and make decisions between foraging options based on the signal and reward properties?
- Do species differ in decision-making mechanisms based on their foraging strategy or other aspects of their ecology?
- How do certain decision mechanisms shape the target of those decisions, such as floral signals and rewards?
- What structures the biogeography of plant-fungal symbioses at the global scale and how will these interactions be disrupted by climate change?
- How do soil microbial composition and functional gene profiles affect soil carbon and nutrient cycling along environmental stress gradients and with climate change?
- What important ecological functions do migratory songbirds play during migration and on their wintering grounds (e.g., seed dispersal), and under what conditions are those affected?
- How can we ensure and improve the ecological function ‘capacity’ of migratory songbirds?
- How can we recognize species of mushroom-forming fungi? Why are there so many species of fungi? How are they related to each other, and what factors have promoted their diversification?
- What are general biogeographical patterns in fungi? What processes are responsible for patterns we observe?
- What is the parentage of the presumed allopolyploid lettuces (Lactuca) in North America, how many species are present, when did they arrive from Eurasia, what has been the consequence of polyploidy for their biology and evolution.
- What factors in introductory biology courses enhance student perceptions and attainment of well-being and success?
- How can institutions develop and provide graduate students opportunities to develop parallel skills in both research and teaching?
- Under what varied circumstances do soils and soil microbial communities determine plant traits and act as selective agents?
- What is the role of anthropogenic change, including fire, urbanization and changes to biodiversity, on plant-soil linkages and feedbacks?
- What are the processes generating spatial patterns of biodiversity? What are the roles of biotic and abiotic factors in determining species’ range limits?
- How do population-level variation in physiology and climatic variation affect predictions of the impacts of climate change?
- What are the direct and indirect effects of particular plant invasions? A direct effect might be shading, for example, or allelopathy, while an indirect effect might be changing the nutrient cycle (e.g., for instance, by being a nitrogen fixer) or the fire regime.
- What are the non-target impacts of particular insects introduced for biological control?
- How does plant form evolve?
- How do novel phenotypes arise?
- How do developmental shifts lead to changes in plant form?
- How does plant form relate to plant function?
- How do animals change their behavior in response to infection and how does this affect their fitness and the fitness of their conspecifics?
- What are the social costs and benefits of behaving sick?
- How do infection-induced behaviors scale up to affect group or population level transmission dynamics?
- How do pathogens manipulate host social behaviors?
- What are the behavioral contact patterns between species that facilitate cross-species transmission?
- How do receivers of animal signals make decisions in realistically complex, noisy environments?
- What are the causes and consequences of the within-individual variation (inconsistency) in animal signals?
- How are multivariate traits shaped by selection from multiple sources (i.e., pre- and postcopulatory sexual selection, natural selection)?