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Love and Bailey published in Knowable Magazine

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In Water Canyon, New Mexico, there is a small, 18-mile-long, high-elevation area called the Magdalena Mountains, surrounded by desert. The isolated peaks host a scrubby collection of plants, including a tiny cluster of about 20 cottonwood trees. They are trapped, as if on an island, unable to escape by migration or pollen flow across the surrounding inhospitable lowland to any faraway, or even nearby, high-elevation area.

It is one of the hottest and driest “sky island” sites that we study, far hotter than any adjacent large mountain chain, and a great place to look for climate-adapted traits.

EEB Spring 2023 Awards Video

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Faculty, staff and students from EEB gathered on May 18, 2023 to celebrate the end of the semester, recognize award-winners, and honor retirees. Check out this YouTube video to see all of the winners, along with some photos from the celebration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzOlHjXd_pY

Teaching Resource Development Award for Poppenwimmer

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Tyler Poppenwimer (Gross & Bailey Labs) won an award to develop online teaching resources to enhance the teaching of Math 152 in spring 2018.

The award, offered by UT’s Office of Information Technology, is open to Graduate Teaching Associates (GTA). The grant is awarded for the enhancement of a course by utilizing OIT-supported technologies and innovative instructional strategies in the redesign of a course or course component to be delivered via the web.

More information about the grant can be found at https://oit.utk.edu/instructional/gtaoit/gtaoit-call/.

 

 

Burghardt in the News

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Professor Gordon Burghardt appears in the June 23 Knoxville News-Sentinel, in an article by Philip Kronk called, “Fear of snakes may date to evolution in Africa.”

Burghardt also appears on The Evolution Institute website, in a conversation with Kevin Laland, author of “Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind.”  They discuss adaptive trends and parallel evolution generated by niche construction.  Associate Professor Joe Bailey’s research gets mentioned, too!

Penley Fellowship for Bayliss

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Shannon Bayliss (Bailey Lab) has received a Penley Fellowship from the Graduate School at UT.  This award is quite new and was first bestowed in 2016.  Awardees are selected on the strength of the applicant’s ability to make a persuasive case for the importance of their project and evidence that the fellowship is necessary to carry out a crucial aspect of the project.

Congratulations, Shannon!

Nature Ecology & Evolution paper for Van Nuland

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Finishing graduate student Michael Van Nuland (Schweitzer Lab) has a new paper out in Nature Ecology & Evolution with Joe Bailey and Jen Schweitzer:

Divergent plant–soil feedbacks could alter future elevation ranges and ecosystem dynamics

Congratulations!  A pdf of the article can be viewed here.  Or, read a press release at Tennessee Today.

Functional Ecology Podcast for Bailey

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Joe Bailey recorded a podcast with Functional Ecology Senior Editor Alan Knapp about the July issue of Functional Ecology.  This special feature issue, on Ecosystems, Evolution and Plant–Soil Feedbacks, was guest-edited by Joe Bailey and Jen Schweizer. Joe talks about where the idea for the Special Feature came from and why a Special Feature focusing on the evolutionary mechanisms and consequences of plant soil feedback was so important to do now.

Functional Ecology Cover Article for Grads

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Current graduate students Michael Van Nuland, Rachel Wooliver, Ian Ware, Alix Pfennigwerth, Liam Mueller (all in the Schweitzer and/ or Bailey Labs), and recent graduate Quentin Read (PhD 2016) have an article on the cover of a recent Functional Ecology Special Feature on Plant Soil Feedback. This is a study that emerged from a class at UTK. This is an amazing paper that, for the first time, places ecosystem ecology into an evolutionary framework by linking theory from the Geographic Mosaic Theory of Coevolution and Niche Construction.

“Plant–soil feedbacks: connecting ecosystem ecology and evolution” Michael E. Van Nuland, Rachel C. Wooliver, Alix A. Pfennigwerth, Quentin D. Read, Ian M. Ware, Liam Mueller, James A. Fordyce, Jennifer A. Schweitzer, Joseph K. Bailey.  DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.12690

 

Editor’s Choice for Read

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Quentin Read’s (PhD 2016) recent paper in Oikos has been highlighted as an “Editor’s Choice” article.

The study challenges how we currently conduct biodiversity studies by demonstrating that a high percentage of studies over estimate the effects of diversity and may actually conclude species level effects when those effects are actually driven by hidden nested variation.

“Accounting for the nested nature of genetic variation across levels of organization improves our understanding of biodiversity and community ecology.” (pages 895–904)
Quentin D. Read, Sean M. Hoban, Maarten B. Eppinga, Jennifer A. Schweitzer and Joseph K. Bailey
Version of Record online: 28 JAN 2016 | DOI: 10.1111/oik.02760