Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

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Plant Sale April 24-25

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The EEB Greenhouses will be having a plant sale on Tuesday & Wednesday, April 24 & 25, from 11:00 – 1:00 in front of Hesler Biology Building. Plants for sale include Begonia, Ghost plant, Golden trumpet, Panda plant, Jewel orchid, Cape sundew and more.

We will be accepting cash or check (no credit cards). Prices range from $5 – $20.

EarthFest 2018

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The 19th Annual Knoxville EarthFest will be held on Saturday, April 28 from 10am-5pm at the Knoxville Botanical Garden.

There will be talks and activities like helping build bat boxes.  The GREBE (Graduate Students in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution) Outreach Committee will have a booth. It’s going to be super fun, especially for kids, so plan to come out! Check out the EarthFest website for all the details.

 

 

GREBE in News-Herald

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EEB’s GREBE (Graduate Researchers in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution) was featured in the Knoxville News-Herald newspaper for their recent outreach work teaching students at Greenback School. Sixth-grade students participated in hands-on tasks, including extracting DNA from bananas, watching termites follow different ink colors, and building miniature ecosystems.

Miranda Chen (Schussler Lab) and Dominique Hatton (Riechert Lab) are mentioned by name in the article.

GREBE is a graduate student organization in EEB at the UT that facilitates collaboration between graduate students and provides representation of graduate student interests to the department and college.

Wildflower Pilgrimage April 19-23

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The 66th Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage will take place8_Trillium_0996thumb April 19-23 2016.  For more information, please select one of the following links:

Thanks to Ken McFarland for organizing this spectacular event!

Photo credit: Trillium undulatum 0996, The Botanical Photography of Alan S. Heilman, copyright Alan S. Heilman, copyright The University of Tennessee Libraries, 2011.

 

 

Darwin Day 2016

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Darwin “Day” is all next week at UTK: we have events Tuesday (croc evolution), Wednesday (invasion of land, with NIMBioS postdoc Sandy Kawano, and a talk on the Gray Fossil Site), and Thursday (Andy Kramer on anti-evolutionism and human paleontology). Our keynote is Thursday, Feb 11 at 7 pm: Neil Shubin, of Tiktaalik fame (also author of the Your Inner Fish bestselling book and star of the PBS series). There will also be giant Darwin and Wallace puppets roaming campus, Darwin Day swag for sale near the library, outreach to teachers, and much more.   All events are free and open to the public.  Please visit darwindaytn.org for more information!

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Grad Student Achievements

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In 2012-2013, thirty-nine EEB grad students submitted progress reports (1st years do not submit a report).  This is what they self-reported:

  • 59 papers published since their last progress reports (in peer-reviewed, international journals, some very high profile; there is some overlap with multi-authored UT authors);
  • 93 presentations given at local, national and international conferences/workshops;
  • $334,796 in grants/fellowships awarded in 12-13 (not counting fellowships awarded in previous years but still funding their research);
  • 3.5 service/outreach activities each, on average (including judging science fairs, manuscript reviews for journals, local events-Darwin Days, Boo at Zoo, etc., talks to the public, press interviews-Knox News, WBIR, Daily Beacon, Today Show, Orlando News Sentinel, blogs, etc.).

We haven’t quantified service/outreach before and it looks like most of our students do something, some of them quite a lot!

It’s great to see our grad students succeeding on so many levels, and sharing their expertise with others.

 

Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage April 23-27

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The 63rd annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage is April 23 – 37. It is “an annual five-day event in Great Smoky Mountains National Park consisting of a variety of wildflower, fauna, and natural history walks, motorcades, photographic tours, art classes, and indoor seminars. Most programs are outdoors in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, while indoor offerings are held in various venues throughout Gatlinburg, TN” (from its website). It includes numerous offerings by EEB people, including a mushroom walk with EEB undergrad (and incoming Matheny lab graduate student) Christine Braaten, a talk and ant hike with faculty member Nate Sanders, and a nighttime bat walk by McCracken lab members. Gene Wofford, director of the UT Herbarium and emeritus EEB faculty member, is one of the organizers of the pilgrimage.

Gavrilets’ work on monogamy featured in Slate

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UTK Distinguished Professor Sergey Gavrilets’ work on the evolution of monogamy, published in PNAS, has been featured in an article in the online magazine Slate. In his model, low-ranked males begin providing resources to females, who begin selecting them rather than higher-ranked males. Such behavior then becomes optimal for males higher and higher up the hierarchy.