Multiple positions are available to join the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the U. of Tennessee, Knoxville, to earn your Masters or PhD degree: http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/graduate-studies/application-information/ .
Program Highlights: * Growing department: 2-6 new tenure track faculty starting Aug. 2016. * Our students have published over 80 papers in the last academic year: Science, Ecology, Systematic Biology, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, American Naturalist, Biological Invasions, Journal of College Science Teaching, and many more. * PhD graduate placement, for all graduates from 2000-2015: 43% tenure track faculty, 22% postdoc, 15% government, with the others in NGOs, private business, or non-tenture track jobs. For those at least five years after graduation, 57% tenure track faculty, 3% postdoc, 17% government. * Resources to support student research, in addition to external funding (i.e., internal funds, DNA sequencing facility, computer clusters, field station, boats). * Available training in teaching best practices, including a certificate in college teaching and training consistent with AAAS national recommendations. * Active initiatives to improve diversity in science (i.e., Program for Excellence & Equity in Research (salary, tuition, and training for 2 years), EEB Women in Science (department wide discussion group)). * Grad students receive health insurance and a tuition waiver. * Guaranteed support for students meeting program expectations (for 5 yrs PhD, 2 yrs Masters). * 64% of students supported by TAing, 36% by fellowships, research, or training grants. * One in twelve students has received NSF Graduate Research Fellowship funding. * Last year students received over $421K in external funds (in addition to internal research funds). * Extensive outreach and service opportunities: students serve on the boards of the Nature Conservancy and American Cichlid Society, do invasive species removal, run taxonomic forays with the broader public, help organize Darwin Day Tennessee, mentor undergraduate and high school researchers, and much more. * Nearby locations for research: Great Smoky Mountains N.P. (home to 17,000 documented species, including 1500 angiosperm, 200 bird, 66 mammal, and 67 fish species); numerous cave systems; campus greenhouses; experimental plots; and much more. * Affordable cost of living. Living wage (for one adult) in Knoxville, TN = $21,216, Cambridge, MA = $27,664, San Francisco area = $28,496 (source: livingwage.mit.edu). Stipends for PhD students start at $22,000 ($19,700 for Masters students), but are often higher. * Vibrant community: 86 miles of greenways and trails in Knoxville, many festivals and parades, museums, live music, and more. * Active departmental graduate student organization (GREBE) to represent and help graduate students. * Potential students should contact advisors before applying: we only accept students into a lab (no rotations). For more information, go to http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/graduate- studies/application-information/ . Application deadline Jan. 1, 2016. ============================================================== Faculty seeking students and sample questions: The list below is not exhaustive – indeed, far from it. There are other faculty members who will be recruiting students in the Department. Also, the listed faculty members may recruit students who have different interests to those listed. But we prepared this list just to illustrate to prospective students some of the diversity of topics on which we envision recruiting, spanning conservation, macroevolution, global change ecology, molecular genetics, biology education and systematics, among many other topics. _______________________________________________________________ Paul Armsworth (http://web.utk.edu/~parmswor) How can large-scale efforts to conserve biodiversity or ecosystem services, which are led by governments or international nonprofits, most effectively complement bottom-up conservation efforts led by local communities? Conservation organizations often have a hierarchical management structure – how effectively do hierarchies allocate resources to support conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services? _______________________________________________________________ Joe Bailey (http://web.utk.edu/~jbaile29/Default.html) How will species range dynamics drive genetic divergence? How do feedbacks reinforce patterns of genetic divergence on the landscape? Does contemporary evolution along the gradients of global change alter ecosystem function? _______________________________________________________________ Ben Fitzpatrick (http://web.utk.edu/~bfitzpa1) What is the coevolutionary relationship between turtles and Salmonella? What determines the form of hybrid zones between salamanders in the Great Smoky Mountains? _______________________________________________________________ Jim Fordyce (http://web.utk.edu/~jfordyce) How does among population variation in plant phenotype affect population structuring of herbivores? What role does host breadth play in range size and diversification rate of herbivorous insects? _______________________________________________________________ Sergey Gavrilets (http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gavrila) How can we understand better theoretically the origins of news species and the links between micro-evolutionary processes and macro-evolutionary patterns? How did human social complexity evolve and what are the implications of our evolutionary past for our social behavior? _______________________________________________________________ Mike Gilchrist (http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/peopletwo/michael-gilchrist) How do assembly costs and translation errors shape selection on codon usage and how do they play themselves out in the face of biased mutation and genetic drift? Some pathogens replicate intracellularly within hosts and move between host cells through budding or bursting. How does the rate of intracellular replication affect the rates of immune response clearance by the host? How, in turn, does this lead to changes in the survival of the host and transmission of the pathogen between hosts? _______________________________________________________________ Lou Gross (http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/) How are biological processes integrated across scales and levels of biological resolution from within organism level to those operating at population/community/landscape levels? How do we effectively utilize mathematical and computational methods for spatial control – what to do, where to do it, when to do it, and how to assess the resulting solutions – for problems in epidemiology, invasive species management and conservation biology? _______________________________________________________________ Susan Kalisz (http://kaliszlab.weebly.com/) How do invaders and antagonistic interactions alter soil fungal communities, the function of key plant mutualisms and shape the demography and life history evolution of native community members? What role does the ecological context, specifically selection driven by the absence of mates and pollinators, play in the evolution of selfing and genomic changes within and between species? Is selfing an evolutionary dead end or a reversible mating system? _______________________________________________________________ Charlie Kwit (http://www.charleskwit.com) What are the effects (actual and predicted) and ramifications of land-use and climate change, management, and disturbance on biodiversity in natural, managed, and agricultural settings? What important roles do animals play in the seed dispersal process in animal-mediated seed dispersal systems? _______________________________________________________________ Brandon Matheny (http://www.bio.utk.edu/matheny/Site/Home.html) How can we recognize species of mushroom-forming fungi? Why are there so many species of fungi? How are they related to each other, and what factors have promoted their diversification? What are general biogeographical patterns in fungi? What processes are responsible for patterns we observe? _______________________________________________________________ Gary McCracken (email: [email protected]) How do highly mobile predators (bats) track ephemeral and patchy resources (insects) in three dimensional space? Why are some host species associated with a greater diversity of viral pathogens than are other host species? _______________________________________________________________ Brian O’Meara (http://www.brianomeara.info) How have plants evolved in response to global temperature change through time? How can we deal with heterogeneous processes on the tree of life? _______________________________________________________________ Susan Riechert (email: [email protected]) What is the importance of behavior in adapting animal populations to different and changing environments? What factors limit local adaptation to environmental context and why do weaker strategies persist? _______________________________________________________________ Ed Schilling (http://www.bio.utk.edu/schilling) What is the parentage of the presumed allopolyploid lettuces (Lactuca) in North America, how many species are present, when did they arrive from Eurasia, what has been the consequence of polyploidy for their biology and evolution. _______________________________________________________________ Beth Schussler (http://www.bio.utk.edu/SchusslerLab) How can biology programs enhance graduate student instruction of introductory biology courses? How do instructor active learning practices relate to student perception of their effectiveness in large introductory biology classes? _______________________________________________________________ Jen Schweitzer (http://jenschweitzer.com) Under what varied circumstances do soils and soil microbial communities determine plant traits and act as selective agents? What is the role of plant-pollinator interactions on soil processes? _______________________________________________________________ Kimberly Sheldon (http://www.biogeographyresearch.org/) What are the processes generating spatial patterns of biodiversity? What are the roles of biotic and abiotic factors in determining species’ range limits? How do population-level variation in physiology and climatic variation affect predictions of the impacts of climate change? _______________________________________________________________ Dan Simberloff (http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/peopletwo/daniel-simberloff) What are the direct and indirect effects of particular plant invasions? A direct effect might be shading, for example, or allelopathy, while an indirect effect might be changing the nutrient cycle (e.g., for instance, by being a nitrogen fixer) or the fire regime. What are the non-target impacts of particular insects introduced for biological control? _______________________________________________________________ Randy Small (http://web.utk.edu/~rsmall) What is the role of polyploidy in governing the success (in terms of species richness) of plant lineages? Why are some polyploid lineages highly diverse, while others are not? What can contemporary patterns of genetic variation within and among populations tell us about species boundaries and the process of speciation? _______________________________________________________________ Joe Williams (http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/peopletwo/joseph-williams-jr) What are the causes/consequences of diversification of reproductive traits in plants? How does a particular reproductive trait, or set of traits, in a clade of plants develop and how does it contribute to diversification of the clade?
