Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

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Darwin Day 2016

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Darwin “Day” is all next week at UTK: we have events Tuesday (croc evolution), Wednesday (invasion of land, with NIMBioS postdoc Sandy Kawano, and a talk on the Gray Fossil Site), and Thursday (Andy Kramer on anti-evolutionism and human paleontology). Our keynote is Thursday, Feb 11 at 7 pm: Neil Shubin, of Tiktaalik fame (also author of the Your Inner Fish bestselling book and star of the PBS series). There will also be giant Darwin and Wallace puppets roaming campus, Darwin Day swag for sale near the library, outreach to teachers, and much more.   All events are free and open to the public.  Please visit darwindaytn.org for more information!

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Science Article for Borstein

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Sam Borstein (O’Meara Lab) is a coauthor on a new article in Science called “A pharyngeal jaw evolutionary innovation facilitated extinction in Lake Victoria cichlids.”

This paper looks at how the pharyngeal jaw apparatus in cichlids, widely considered an evolutionary innovation allowing them to feed on a variety of prey items, doomed piscivorous cichlids when the Nile perch invaded Lake Victoria in the 1950’s. The results suggests that competition in conjunction with predation by the introduced Nile perch drove hundreds of endemic cichlid species to extinction.

Congratulations, Sam!

Award for Pfennigwerth

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Not only did Alix Pfennigwerth (Schweitzer Lab) win a scholarship to support her travel, lodging and registration to attend the Natural Areas Conference, she received an award while she was there!

Pfennigwerth won “best student oral presentation” at the conference in Little Rock, AR, which was held November 3-5.  She presented results from her Master’s work in a talk called, “Inferring response to climate change from natural laboratories: is there convergence in plant functional traits across multiple elevational gradients in Rhododendron maximum?” She discussed how patterns from her field and common garden experiments are relevant to conservation professionals and can be used to inform conservation planning for future natural areas under climate change.

 

Kim Bush (BS 1973), Distinguished Alumnus

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Kim Bush (BS 1973, Zoology) was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus at the Alumni Board Awards dinner on Friday, October 2.  Bush has devoted his life and career to the advancement of global health. After completing a highly successful thirty- three-year career at Baxter International Healthcare Corporation, he was recruited in 2011 to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he is the foundation’s director of Life Science Partnerships and serves on the Global Health Leadership Team, working to solve some of the world’s toughest healthcare issues.

The Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Award is the single highest alumni award given and is reserved for alumni who have excelled at the national or international level. The purpose of this award is to recognize an alumnus of The University of Tennessee who has attained extraordinary distinction and success in his or her field of endeavor, whose achievements have brought credit to The University of Tennessee and benefit to his or her fellow citizens.

 

Scholarship for Pfennigwerth

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Alix Pfennigwerth (Schweitzer Lab) was awarded a Natural Areas Association Student Scholarship to fund her travel, lodging and registration to attend the Natural Areas Conference in Little Rock Arkansas, Nov 3-5, 2015.  She will present results from her EEB Master’s work there. Her talk, called “Inferring response to climate change from natural laboratories: is there convergence in plant functional traits across multiple elevational gradients in Rhododendron maximum?” discusses how patterns from her field and common garden experiments are relevant to conservation professionals and can be used to inform conservation planning for future natural areas under climate change. The award is from the Natural Areas Association with donor support from Bureau of Land Management.

USFWS Grant for EEB & FWF

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Emma Willcox (PI, Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries), Gary McCracken (co-PI, EEB), and Riley Bernard (co-PI, Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries) have recently been awarded almost $250,000 by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to try to identify the differences in susceptibility of different species of bats to the fungus that causes White Nose Syndrome. This work will be conducted in east and middle Tennessee and will be a joint effort with the National Park Service, the TN Wildlife Resources Agency, The Nature Conservancy, and the TN Department of Environment and Conservation.  The grant is called, “The effect of winter emergence and foraging on the susceptibility of Southeastern bats to Psuedogymnoascus destructans: Implications for conservation and management.”

The same trio of PIs also received a $10,000 grant from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture Center for Wildlife Health for the same project.