Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

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EEB T-Shirts For Sale!

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Orders must be placed by February 12.  Shirts cost only $12 each, and all profits will go towards GREBE-sponsored travel grants for EEB graduate students.

More information from Riley Bernard, GREBE President:

GREBE has been wanting to make EEB T-shirts for the last few years and we have finally found a way to do it! We held a T-shirt design contest, with the winning design created by Max Rupp (a Master’s student in Darrin Hulsey’s lab). In an attempt to minimize screen-printing costs and maximize profit, we decided to go with Teespring.com. This company allows you to design a t-shirt, make a campaign bid and sell the shirts at a low price, all while taking orders via paypal. We have set the price at $12 a shirt, with a goal of selling 30 shirts. If we reach our goal of 30 (deadline by February 12), the t-shirts will be printed and sent to you within 10-14 days (shipping is $3.85). You will only be charged for the shirt if 30 are ordered by the deadline. All profits will go towards GREBE-sponsored travel grants for EEB graduate students.

Please order shirts for all your friends and family 🙂 and if you have questions, please let me know.

Hollingsworth et al. Article

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A new paper by Hollingsworth et al. has come out in BMC Evolutionary Biology that provides the most complete phylogeny to date of North American minnows.  

Hollingsworth, P.R. Jr., A.M. Simons, J.A. Fordyce, and C.D. Hulsey. 2013. Explosive diversification following a benthic to pelagic shift in freshwater fishes. BMC Evolutionary Biology. 13:272.

The article is open access:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/13/272

Update: New Grad/ Undergrad Publication

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A new paper by Gorman et al. has come out in AoB Plants, with 11 graduate and undergraduate student authors from EEB! 

AoB PLANTS Chief Editor has designated this paper as an ‘Editor’s Choice’ article.  The ‘Editor’s Choice’ section of AoB PLANTS highlights articles that the Chief Editor finds especially impressive and of broad interest to the scientific community. The article will be featured prominently on the website as one of a select group that have achieved this recognition.

This paper was the result of a class project in Field Ecology and is entitled “Species identity influences belowground arthropod assemblages via functional traits.”  Click here to view the pdf.

NSF Grant for O’Meara and Gilchrist

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Congratulations to Brian O’Meara and Mike Gilchrist, who were recently awarded a new grant from NSF for “Population genetics-based codon models.”  They will be developing new methods of phylogenetic reconstruction using protein coding sequences of DNA.  Unlike most work in this area, their methods will be based on evolutionary models that explicitly include the forces of mutation, natural selection and genetic drift.  Their work will result in more accurate inferences of the evolutionary relationships between different taxa and, simultaneously, estimates of the strength of natural selection on the coding sequences.

DOE Grant for Classen

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Aimee Classen has received more than $880,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate often-overlooked carbon cycle players.

She and her team will examine factors that influence carbon cycling below the ground and are not included in today’s carbon-cycle models, such as bacteria and fungi.

For more information about Classen’s proposed research, read the full TN Today article.  Her research was also picked up by the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Mulholland Endowment Challenge Match

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Friends and colleagues of Pat Mulholland have an opportunity to double the impact of their contributions in support of the Pat Mulholland Post-Doctoral Endowed Fellowship. A donor has generously pledged to give up to $10,000 in this challenge match donation.  Any contributions we make that exceed this $10,000 challenge also will be placed in the Mulholland Endowment Fund. 

Throughout his career, Dr. Patrick Mulholland was a strong advocate for early career scientists as well as for collaboration between University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In recognition of Dr. Mulholland’s efforts, this endowment will support a postdoctoral fellow for one to three years to conduct collaborative research in ecology or environmental sciences, focusing on pressing environmental issues related to global change, with faculty in the Ecology and Environmental Biology Department (EEB) at UT and staff scientists at ORNL.  For more information about Pat Mulholland, please read the Mulholland Endowment Article from page 2 of the 2012 EEB Newsletter.

To give to the Mulholland Post-Doc Fellowship Endowment Challenge

By Mail

Please make checks payable to “The University of Tennessee Foundation” and indicate “Mulholland End. / MULHO_P” in the memo line.

Mailing address:           College of Arts and Sciences Development Office
                                          2524 Dunford Hall
                                          Knoxville, TN 37996-4000

By Phone

To make a pledge or give a gift using your VISA, Mastercard, or Discover credit card, you may call the office at (865) 974-2295.

Online

Visit volsconnect.com/patmulholland to donate online using our secure website.

Stock Gifts

There can be significant tax advantages for donors choosing to transfer highly appreciated (long-term) securities to the UT Foundation as a charitable gift. The value of your gift depends upon the market price of your assets when they are given. Please contact Cathy Dodge (865-974-4321) or Judy Miller (865-974-2557) for more information on gifts of securities.

 One-time donations and multi-year pledges are welcome.

Woody Plants of Kentucky and Tennessee

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Eugene Wofford has co-authored a new book called Woody Plants of Kentucky and Tennessee: The Complete Winter Guide to Their Identification and Use.  The guide enables people to identify trees, shrubs, and woody vines during the winter months, when the absence of leaves and fruit makes plants difficult to recognize.  It also provides notes on practical uses for the plants. The book features more than 400 species and is written for amateurs as well as professional botanists.  It was published in October by the University Press of Kentucky and is also available from Amazon.com.

Van Nuland et al. article in PLos One

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Michael Van Nuland, along with other EEB grad students and undergrads just published a paper in PLoS One resulting from a Field Ecology Project. View the paper here!

Title: Fire Promotes Pollinator Visitation: Implications for Ameliorating Declines of Pollination Services. 

Authors: Michael E. Van Nuland, Elliot N. Haag, Jessica A. M. Bryant, Quentin D. Read, Robert N. Klein, Morgan J. Douglas, Courtney E. Gorman, Trey D. Greenwell, Mark W. Busby, Jonathan Collins, Joseph T. LeRoy, George Schuchmann, Jennifer A. Schweitzer, Joseph K. Bailey.

Grad Student Achievements

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In 2012-2013, thirty-nine EEB grad students submitted progress reports (1st years do not submit a report).  This is what they self-reported:

  • 59 papers published since their last progress reports (in peer-reviewed, international journals, some very high profile; there is some overlap with multi-authored UT authors);
  • 93 presentations given at local, national and international conferences/workshops;
  • $334,796 in grants/fellowships awarded in 12-13 (not counting fellowships awarded in previous years but still funding their research);
  • 3.5 service/outreach activities each, on average (including judging science fairs, manuscript reviews for journals, local events-Darwin Days, Boo at Zoo, etc., talks to the public, press interviews-Knox News, WBIR, Daily Beacon, Today Show, Orlando News Sentinel, blogs, etc.).

We haven’t quantified service/outreach before and it looks like most of our students do something, some of them quite a lot!

It’s great to see our grad students succeeding on so many levels, and sharing their expertise with others.