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UT Researchers Receive NSF CAREER Awards for Science, Engineering

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Two researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have received prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER awards to help them establish a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.

Stephanie Kivlin, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Wei Wang, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, join the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, which supports the nation’s best early-career faculty and recognizes their promise as academic role models in research and education.

EEB Graduate Student Django Grootmyers discusses “zombie” fungi on WVLT

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Fungi have come to the cultural forefront with the new popular series, “The Last of Us” on HBO. The series, based upon the video game of the same name, is set in an alternate 2023, during which a mass fungal infection has caused societal breakdown. In this piece produced by CBS-affiliate WVLT, EEB graduate student Django Grootmyers discusses whether this fiction could ever become fact. 

https://www.wvlt.tv/2023/03/05/growing-danger-your-backyard/

New Book from Matheny

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EEB’s Brandon Matheny, together with Neale Bougher from the Western Australian Herbarium, authored a book that came out in June 2017 called Fungi of Australia: Inocybaceae.  This major revision describes a total of 137 recognized species, of which 101 are new to science!  Read the full description from the publisher, below.

From Csiro Publishing

The family Inocybaceae are a diverse cosmopolitan group of gilled fungi. Until now, only a small number of species had been described from Australia, but with this major revision a total of 137 species are recognised, of which 101 are new to science. Ninety per cent of these species (121 of the 137) are found only in Australia. Phylogenetic work shows that the family can be divided into seven main groups, of which six are now recorded from Australia, making this country one of the major centres of diversity for the family. They are all thought to be ectomycorrhizal, that is they form mutually beneficial associations with the roots of plants, and are found on soil and amid litter in wet- and dry-sclerophyll shrublands, woodlands and forests, and cool- or warm temperate rainforests. Many are small and easily overlooked, but their diversity of colour and delicate structure make them attractive to those with an eye for detail.­ This authoritative account provides a major advance in knowledge for this diverse and widespread group, with detailed descriptions, identification keys and phylogenetic trees based on DNA sequences generated during the work. Every species is illustrated with coloured plates and/or line drawings of microscopic features.

Fungi of Australia: Inocybaceae is a useful reference for professional and semi-professional mycologists in Australia and around the world.

Hughes, Matheny, and Petersen in News-Sentinel

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The Knoxville News-Sentinel has an article on the research that Karen Hughes, Brandon Matheny and Ron Petersen are doing on the post-fire growth of fungi in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Check it out at

http://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/tennessee/gatlinburg/2017/04/04/more-than-75-want-do-post-fire-research-great-smoky-mountains-national-park/99972750/

Cover Images for Matheny Lab

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Marisol Sanchez-Garcia (PhD 2016), former Matheny Lab member and now a postdoc at Clark University, landed a paper on ectomycorrhizal diversification on the cover of Evolution for January 2017.

 

Also, Biz Sheedy, a visiting grad student to the Matheny Lab from Melbourne, has a paper on the diversification of truffle-forming fungi in Australia on the cover of Australian Systematic Botany (Volume 29 numbers 4-5).