Working at the Boundary of Science and Land Management
Alix assists on a prescribed burn in Cades Cove. Photo credit: Matt Jernigan
Alix Pfennigwerth, a vegetation ecologist and UT EEB alumna (’11, ’17), has spent the past several years working in land management and science with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and National Park Service (NPS). Now, she works as a biologist with the Inventory & Monitoring Program at Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP). She credits a lot of her success today to her time spent in EEB.
“I often tell people that earning my master’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at UT was one of the hardest but most rewarding things I’ve done in my life,” Alix said.
Working at the boundary of science and land management, Alix wears many hats. Her primary responsibility at GSMNP is to design, implement, and manage a variety of long-term vegetation monitoring projects, but she also has many collateral duties. Alix collects ecological data from one of the park’s 160 long-term forest monitoring plots, teaches visitors and students about wetland ecology, and consults with park managers to help them carry out park activities in an ecologically sound manner. Sometimes, she also swings a Pulaksi on a prescribed burn fire line on trails with the park’s Search and Rescue team.
“The diversity of my work as a federal scientist is part of what I find so rewarding,” Alix said. “Due to my scientific training, I can be confident that I’m conducting the highest-caliber, most meaningful research and monitoring possible. I also find it incredibly satisfying to be able to apply that science to help answer the many questions and decisions that park managers are faced with every day.”
Alix credits EEB for preparing her for her career path. Some she realized at the time, but other things took a bit longer for her to appreciate fully. One easy connection is the successful grant proposals and papers Alix authored in graduate school and her continued success in writing grant proposals, scientific papers and agency reports. Alix also served as the undergraduate lab coordinator throughout graduate school in Jen Schweitzer’s lab. She credits this experience as well.
“I’ve continued to hire, manage and mentor interns and technicians with the USGS and NPS, and I’m comfortable doing this because I learned how to in Jen’s lab.”
During graduate school, Alix sought out roles and experiences that felt meaningful and relevant to her interests and career, such as serving on the board of the nonprofit Tennessee Invasive Plant Council, volunteering weekly with the GSMNP vegetation monitoring program, and presenting at the Natural Areas conference. This may have made an already busy graduate student busier, but Alix feels strongly that taking on these roles set her up for success.
“Success is accomplishing the many essential duties of a federal scientist, such as effectively managing interns and staff, communicating and collaborating productively with scientists and non-scientists, managing time and resources,” Alix said. “It is also being passionate, but level-headed about your work.”
This regional biodiversity also faces local challenges such as increased urbanization and population density, fires, and global challenges such as climate change. Understanding and conserving the ecosystems and their functions are critical to safeguarding the many life sustaining and enhancing benefits people in the region derive from nature. For example, GSMNP is the most visited national park in the US, bringing more than $950 million in visitor spending in 2019 that supported 13,737 jobs in the local area, but overuse is a park management concern. Likewise, the mighty Tennessee River provides water to five million people and is home to more than 250 species of native fishes. East Tennessee is becoming increasingly important as a significant carbon sink because of its intensively managed, highly productive forests.
Jonathan Dickey, a graduate student in the Fordyce lab, investigates the mediation of pollinator network assembly by rhizospheric soil microbiota through reproductive plant traits and aboveground fitness consequences in the genus Salvia. He demonstrates this by sampling soil microbiomes of Salvia lyrata at various phenological stages of development while measuring traits like photosynthetic biomass and floral abundance.
In spring 2018, Daniel Malagon won the EEB Undergraduate Research Poster Contest as a junior. He has been conducting out-of-class research over the course of his undergraduate career. He has devoted as much of his time as possible into two labs – one led by Professor Susan Kalisz (EEB) and one led by Professor Matt Gray (FWF).
The hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) is an invasive insect that is devastating hemlock populations (Tsuga canadensis and T. caroliniana) in eastern North America. Anna and fellow students in the lab analyzed the type and frequency of information presented by the media, including newspaper, radio, and television. In April 2018, they presented posters about their research at UT’s Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement (EURēCA).
Although it is likely most people have experienced ants at a picnic, they may not realize ants are important seed dispersers, a mutualism referred to by ecologists as myrmecochory. Seed dispersal by ants exists worldwide, but the eastern deciduous forests are a hotspot for this ant-plant interaction. Approximately 35 percent of the herbaceous plants in the understory of forests in eastern North America rely on ants for seed dispersal. Plant species that have coevolved myrmecochory have an oil-rich appendage, known as an elaiosome. The elaiosome attracts the ants with chemical cues. Ants pick up the seed by the elaiosome and return with it to their nest where they feed the elaiosome to their brood. The seed either remains in the nest or is taken outside of the nest. Thus, in myrmecochory, ants gain food, and seeds receive dispersal away from their parent plant, protection from seed predators, and a nutrient-rich germination site in or around ant nests.
Pursuing his DDS at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, John Patrick (J.P.) Carney (’13) begins his fourth and final year of dental school this fall. He will graduate May 2019. A graduate from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Carney received his BS in biological sciences with a concentration in ecology and evolutionary biology. Before he began his first year at UT, Carney knew he wanted to become a dentist.
“Microbes can sometimes get a bad reputation, causing disease, food spoilage, etc.,” Kivlin says. “But, people are often surprised to learn that most microorganisms are beneficial for humans; increasing crop yields, purifying water, and recycling nutrients from dead plants back into soils.”
