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Suissa Study Has High Hopes For Plant-Ant Partnerships

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Ants crawling on a green stem

by Randall Brown

Collaborations across research disciplines can lead to unexpected breakthroughs and discoveries. Collaborations across species lead to unexpected evolutionary paths of mutual benefit.

For example, some plants have managed to recruit ant bodyguards. They produce sugary nectar on their leaves that attracts the ants, then these very territorial and aggressive ant mercenaries patrol “their” plant and sting or bite herbivores that try to eat it.

These relationships are well-documented in flowering plants, but they also occur in non-flowering ferns. This is weird news for researchers, as it has long been thought that ferns lack the nectaries for such complex biotic interactions.

Jacob Suissa, assistant professor in the UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, worked with colleagues at Cornell University, including fern expert Fay-Wei li and ant expert Corrie Moreau, to investigate how this phenomenon developed over the millennia. They recently published findings in Nature Communications about the evolutionary timeline and underlying factors of this interspecies partnership.

“The new elements of this work are twofold,” explained Suissa. “First, we discovered that nectaries—the structures that produce sugary nectar to attract ant bodyguards—evolved in ferns and flowering plants around the same time.”

This happened some 135 million years ago, coinciding with the rise of plant-ant associations in the Cretaceous period. 

“This timing is quite spectacular given that it is very late in fern evolutionary history, nearly 200 million years after their origin,” said Suissa. “But it’s very early in flowering plant evolutionary history, nearly at the start of their origin in the Cretaceous.”

The second new element is how it all happened. Ferns originally flourished as terrestrial plants, growing on the forest floor. They transitioned in a major way in the Cenozoic Era, around 60 million years ago, becoming epiphytic, or tree dwelling, plants.

They learned some new habits on their way up.

“We discovered that as ferns left the forest floor and moved into the canopies, either as epiphytes, climbers, or tree ferns, they tapped into the existing ant-flowering plant interactions and evolved nectaries,” said Suissa.

This presents a curious dynamic in the ecological and evolutionary history of these two plant lineages. Ferns and flowering plants diverged from a common ancestor more than 400 million years ago, but then hit their stride in parallel with their nectary evolution and the mutually beneficial ant-plant tradeoff.

“This suggests that there may be some ‘rules of life’ governing the evolution of non-floral nectaries and ant-plant mutualism,” said Suissa. “This work can help future investigations by providing the evolutionary framework or backdrop for ecological, developmental, or genomic analyses.”

Read Suissa’s full paper, “Convergent evolution of nectaries in ferns facilitated the independent recruitment of ant-bodyguard from flowering plants,” in Nature Communications.

Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, and Academic Outreach

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Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, and Academic Outreach

During the 2023 UT College of Arts and Sciences faculty convocation, EEB faculty received awards for excellence in teaching, research, and academic outreach. 

Benjamin Keck, Lecturer – Excellence in Teaching Awards: Lecturer

Benjamin Keck is presented with an award by Liem Tran at the Faculty Awards Ceremony

Ben Keck is an outstanding and dedicated lecturer for the University of Tennessee who has supported student learning in the classroom, in the field, and in the lab for many years. His teaching practice stands out for his high level of innovation, enthusiasm, and positive course climate.

Keck is a dedicated undergraduate teacher of both introductory biology courses and upper-level majors courses. His appointment is across two units—general biology and EEB—and he makes a huge contribution both as a teacher and a mentor to students. As the Director of the Ichthyology Collection at UT, Keck also makes outstanding contributions to community outreach efforts to highlight the diversity and importance of fishes in Eastern Tennessee.


Randy Small, Professor – Excellence in Teaching Awards: Senior

Randy Small is presented with an award by Liem Tran at the Faculty Awards Banquet

Randy Small is a full professor in EEB and has been the director for Teaching and Learning in the Division of Biology since 2019. His first rate and long-standing contributions to the educational mission of the College of Arts and Sciences makes him the perfect winner of this award. Legions of students in EEB as a department and the whole Division of Biology have benefited from Small’s dedication to student success, outstanding teaching practice, and educational vision and leadership. This award is long overdue.


Laura Alexandra Russo, Assistant Professor – Faculty Academic Outreach Award: Research & Creative Activity

Laura Alexandra Russo is presented with an award at the Faculty Awards Ceremony

Russo is an outstanding faculty member in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology whose outreach has raised the profile of UT Knoxville scientifically and to the public. Her research engages the public, community groups, state agencies, students, and others to tackle declines in bee species and other pollinators and what can be done to reverse these trends. Her approach exemplifies engaged scholarship that is conducted with and in communities.

Russo regularly leads outreach events at state parks like Seven Islands and Roan Mountain and national parks like the Great Smoky Mountains, including pollinator and plant hikes and bioblitzes in which community members find, identify, and document biodiversity. She actively engages with UT Extension, giving seminars and running outreach events at UT’s research and education centers across the state.


Elisabeth Schussler, Professor – Outstanding Service Award

Elisabeth Schussler is presented an award by Robert Hinde at the Faculty Awards Ceremony

In her role as Director of Biology Teaching and Learning, Professor Schussler ensures our students in the lower-division biology courses receive excellence instruction from our graduate teaching assistants and nontenure-track faculty. 

She provides professional development opportunities for instructors to be at the top of their teaching game and it is this passion for high-quality teaching across the natural sciences that led her to build teams of faculty members across the college and university who also want high-quality instruction in lower-level courses. As Faculty Senate president, she supported the ideas of liberal arts learning through cultivation of a strong shared governance process. 

Simberloff Honored by British Ecological Society

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Each year, the British Ecological Society (BES) recognizes 11 distinguished ecologists whose work has benefited the scientific community and society in general.

Daniel Simberloff, the Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Science in the UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, received an honorary membership – the Society’s highest honor – for his “exceptional contribution at the international level to the generation, communication, and promotion of ecological knowledge and solutions.”

“I have been an avid reader of BES journals since my earliest graduate school days,” Simberloff said. “My extensive research on Charles Elton led me to a greater appreciation of the leading role BES plays in shaping the direction of ecological research. I am humbled and deeply grateful that the Society would confer such an honor on me.”

Simberloff’s research focus is invasion biology, community composition, and the structure of organisms in specific features. One long-term project in Patagonia he has worked on involves invasive conifer trees and the introduction of deer, boar, and fungi. Almost a century ago, non-native tree species were introduced to a cleared section in the middle of a native forest in an attempt to establish a forestry industry on Isla Victoria, an island in the middle of Lake Nahuel Huapi. Only seven of the original species spread in number beyond the plantations.

“Our research shows that absence of suitable mycorrhizal fungi in the native forest keeps many of the non-native species from spreading,” Simberloff said. “Boar introduced in 1999, however, are exacerbating the invasion by rooting for fungal mycelium. Also, two species of deer introduced long ago may be aiding the spread.”

Simberloff became fascinated with nature during his childhood in rural Pennsylvania, but it was his time at Harvard College that got him hooked on ecology.

“I was seduced by the aesthetics and challenge of mathematics, but a non-majors biology course and an entomology course steered me back into biology and to the laboratory of Edward O. Wilson, who advised my doctorate: a test of the equilibrium theory of island biogeography with the arthropod communities of small mangrove islands,” Simberloff said. “This research and interactions with Wilson and Robert MacArthur, who served as a member of my doctoral committee, led me to a lifelong interest in the community level of organization – which species are found together, which are not found together, and why.”

Simberloff, along with Robin Chazdon, University of the Sunshine Coast, in Australia and Monica Turner, University of Wisconsin-Madison, joined the BES Honorary Membership roster, which includes British Ecologist Sir David Attenborough.

This year, there are winners across five continents, representing the international membership of the BES. Learn more about the 2023 BES award winners.

EEB Faculty Awarded

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Three of EEB’s own faculty members, Nina Fefferman, Orou Gaoue, and Xingli Giam, were honored with awards at the recent College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Awards Night. 

Nina Fefferman was recognized with the Academic Outreach Award for Service – she was not able to attend the ceremony, as she was doing more of the pandemic preparedness / response work for which she was honored.

Orou Gaoue was recognized with the Academic Outreach Award for Research and Creative Activity. 

Xingli Giam was recognized with the Early Career Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement  award. 

Congratulations to these faculty members! 

Investigating New Digital Authorities

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In the years since social media became part of our daily lives, an increased number of individuals are self-organizing online around identity, social topics, and various other interests. This transition leads to a new type of cultural authority and one that researchers are investigating to understand how the online human world interacts with the offline human world at both the individual and collective level. 

Sergey Gavrilets, Distinguished Professor in the UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to research the emergence of these new digital authorities on social media. The $1.2 million grant is the largest Templeton Foundation award in UT history.

“I’ve always been puzzled by how presumably reasonable people can come up with completely different strong beliefs or understandings about the same events or processes that happened or are happening in different situations affecting their personal life or our society,” Gavrilets said. “Over the last couple of years, with the 2020 elections and COVID, these differences have become particularly striking and their real and potential consequences particularly dangerous.”

The big question he wants to answer? “How are contemporary social media changing human social and cultural evolution?”

Understanding How New Authorities Develop

Gavrilets and colleague Neil Johnson from the George Washington University will leverage recent work on online behaviors to build a new understanding of how these new authorities develop and function. They will look at how these new authorities contribute to cultural polarizations and how their efforts and impacts are influenced. 

“We will study the emergence of self-organized groups spouting extremism, hate, and vaccine hesitancy within and across social media platforms,” Gavrilets said. “We will look at their structure and try to understand how its composition defines who listens and how these new identity groups emerge.”

Gavrilets, a mathematical biologist whose work focuses on human social behavior, will borrow ideas and theoretical tools from ecology and evolutionary biology and apply them to human social behaviors online. 

“This work will not only help us to understand online human social behaviors better, but also how our attitudes and beliefs are shaped,” said Gavrilets, who also is the director of the Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity at UT.

“Misinformation about science, climate change, vaccination, COVID, and political processes and events has a potential to affect the life, prosperity, and wellbeing of everyone in a negative way,” Gavrilets said. “By understanding how new social and cultural authorities are formed online, we can develop better policies for governments and businesses to counter misinformation and simultaneously promote public understanding of science-based policies aiming to improve our life and prosperity.”

To learn more, read the full project summary online. 

About the John Templeton Foundation

Founded in 1987, the John Templeton Foundation supports research and catalyzes conversations that inspire people with awe and wonder. They fund work on subjects ranging from black holes and evolution to creativity, forgiveness, and free will. They also encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, theologians, and the public at large. Their aspiration is to help people create lives of meaning and purpose and to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.

With an endowment of $3.8 billion and annual giving of approximately $140 million, the Foundation ranks among the 25 largest grantmaking foundations in the United States. Headquartered outside Philadelphia, their philanthropic activities have engaged all major faith traditions and extended to more than 57 countries around the world.