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EEB’s Amazing Grad Students: Publications

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EEB graduate students know how to communicate their science!  In Academic Year 2015-16, our 56 grad students published over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, several book chapters, and one book!  Below is a list of just some of the journals in which our students publish:

American Biology Teacher
American Naturalist
Animal Behavior
Applied Ecology
Biological Conservation
Biological Invasions
Botany
Conservation Letters
Current Zoology
Diversity and Distributions
Ecology
Ecosphere
Evolutionary Biology
Forest Ecology and Management
Frontiers in Plant Biology
Frontiers in Microbiology
Functional Ecology
Fungal Biology
General and Comparative Endocrinology
Global Change Biology
Journal of Biogeography
Journal of Vegetation Science
Molecular Ecology
Molecular Ecology Resources
Trends in Ecology and Evolution
Mycologia
Nature Communications
New Phytologist
Oecologia
PeerJ
PLoS One
Proceedings Royal Society, B
Restoration Ecology
Royal Society Open Science
Science

EEB’s Amazing Grad Students: Funding

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Did you know that 25% of our graduate students are self-funded?  In Academic Year 2015-16, 14 of our 56 grad students brought in a combined total of over $300k in funding from the following sources:

  • 4 current NSF GRFP (plus 1 honorable mention AY2015)
  • 2 PEER Fellows
  • 2 NIMBIOs Fellows
  • 1 Yates fellowship
  • 1 Brazilian CNPq fellowship
  • 1 DOE SGRSR
  • 1 EAPSI Fellow
  • 2 Current NSF DDIG winners ($13K each)

 

Roche, Botanist in Action

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Graduate student Morgan Roche (Kalisz Lab) is one of Phipps Conservatory’s six current Botany in Action fellows.   The fellows recently visited Phipps, in Pittsburgh, PA, for the Botany in Action program’s annual Science Engagement Week, which featured a series of diverse workshops to enhance the fellows’ scientific communication skills. The fellows explored different ways to communicate their research with those outside of their immediate fields—which included sharing their research with middle school and high school students on the very first day of their workshop!

Read more on the Phipps blog.

Scientific American Blog Highlights UT Research

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The popular Scientific American Blog has posted an article about bat research done by grad student Jessica Welch (McCracken and Simberloff labs) and NIMBioS postdoc Jeremy Beaulieu.

The article, “Are Bats Facing a Hidden Extinction Crisis? A new way of calculating bat extinction risk reveals previously hidden conservation priorities,” can be viewed here.

Tennessee Today also did an article covering the blog post.

New Paper for Welch

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Jessica Welch (Simberloff and McCracken Labs) has a new paper out in Biological Conservation.  The paper is based on the field work she conducted in the Northern Mariana Islands, testing the indirect effect of invasive species on an endangered bat.  Congratulations, Jessica!

Jessica Nicole Welch, James A. Fordyce, Daniel S. Simberloff.  2016.  Indirect impacts of invaders: A case study of the Pacific sheath-tailed bat (Emballonura semicaudata rotensis).  Biological Conservation.  Volume 201.  Pages 146–151.  doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.07.004

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

Window into the Past

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Thirty years ago, Lou Gross composed a history of the Graduate Program in Ecology.  He has now compiled a website of the data he collected.

Some say UT’s Graduate Program in Ecology was the first PhD-granting program in ecology in the US. The program admitted its first students in 1969 with the first MS graduate in 1971 and PhD graduate in 1972.  It formally became part of EEB in 1995.

Lou recruited those involved in establishing the program to be interviewed by WUOT staff, and several interviews were aired on WUOT’s Segue program.  The recordings are downloadable from this page, including

  • Jim Tanner (of “Ghost Bird” fame), the first interim director of the program;
  • Frank McCormick, the first director of the program;
  • Stan Auerbach, an Environmental Sciences Division Director at ORNL;
  • Mike Pelton;
  • Henry Fribourg.

You may find their various comments about the state of ecology at the time interesting. Lou hopes to add more oral history to the webpage, from other people who were involved in getting EEB started.