Faculty News and Updates
From publishing books to winning national awards, our faculty have made their mark on the field of ecology and evolutionary biology over the past year. Below is a sampling of articles from our EEB blog. We hope you enjoy reading about our fantastic faculty!
Michael Blum’s research on rats was featured on The Atlantic’s CityLab website. Read More.
Gordon Burghardt was featured in a Discover magazine article about play behavior in non-mammalian animals. Read More. He has also been featured in the Knoxville News Sentinel, on NPR, and the Observer.
Todd Freeberg’s behavioral ecology study was featured in an article in Natural History. Read More.
Sergey Gavrilets coauthored paper about a new study that sheds light on the power of norms and the origins of cooperation. Read More. Gavrilets also authored a paper in Science Reports that is getting international attention. Read More.
Louis J. Gross has been chosen as a member of the inaugural class of fellows of the Society for Mathematical Biology. Read More.
Colleen M. Iversen has been named as an Ecological Society of America Early Career Fellow for 2017. Read More.
Brandon Matheny authored Fungi of Australia: Inocybaceae. It is a major revision and describes a total of 137 recognized species, of which 101 are new to science! Read More. He also received an award from the Daniel E. Stuntz Memorial Foundation to revise the taxonomy of species of mushroom-forming fungi called Inocybe. Read More. Finally, Matheny’s research about hallucinogenic mushrooms and their insect-repellent properties received some attention this year. Read More.
Matheny Lab graduate students published papers that ended up on the cover of two scientific magazines. Read More.
Gary McCracken published a paper about a new study demonstrating Brazilian free-tailed bats are faster than previously documented. Read More.
Beth Schussler is co-PI on collaborative NSF S-STEM grant, which will provide scholarships and research opportunities for STEM-focused students from rural Appalachia to attend UT. Read More.
Kimberly Sheldon was featured in Entomology Today for her work on climate and thermal limits in beetles. Read More.
Daniel Simberloff, the Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Science, received the Honorable John C. Pritzlaff Conservation Award at the 2016 California Islands Symposium. Read More. Simberloff and postdoc Christy Leppanen received a grant from the Eppley Foundation for hemlock woolly adelgid research. Read More. Simberloff was also featured in Wired and Slate magazines.