nsanders@utk.edu
CV
Nate is interested in all of the work described on these pages.
Tara comes to us from McGill University where she worked on spider community ecology. At UT, she's planning on looking at how interactions among a variety of leaf litter arthropods affect community structure and ecosystem processes here in the southern Appalachians and in northern North America.
jjblue3@utk.edu
Jarrod is interested in the application of the models of metacommunity theory. His undergraduate work at Davidson College worked to test the model of species sorting and mass effects within treehole communities.
Greg Crutsinger, PhD candidate
gcrutsin@utk.edu
Greg is finishing the 4th year of his dissertation research on the community- and ecosystem-level consequences of hostplant population genetic diversity in Solidago altissima and linkages across surf and turf boundaries. Greg is funded by an NSF Predoctoral Fellowship and an EPA STAR fellowship.
Jean-Philippe Lessard, PhD candidate
jlessard@utk.edu
JP is finishing the 2nd year of his PhD on ant community ecology and biogeography. JP's research will adopt a phylogenetic approach to the study of community assembly and biological invasion processes.
Mariano's research focuses on the study of plant-animal interactions, especially mutualisms involving seed dispersal by frugivorous vertebrates.He is especially interested in the causes and consequences of the disruption of plant-animal interactions due to anthropogenic disturbance and/or exotic species in the temperate forests of Patagonia, Argentina.
katiestuble@gmail.com
Katie's interested in how global warming will mediate the effects of ants on ecosystem processes. Her Masters thesis (at UGA) was on the effects of Solenopsis invicta on native ant communities and seed dispersal.
Claire is working with WIndy in the Smokies this summer, spending time in the backcountry and examing spatial and temporal variation in plant community structure.
Audry spent the summer in Idaho, and and the academic year in the lab sorting arthropod specimens from the Smokies. She's now working with Nora Underwood on plant-insect interactions in sunny Florida.
Andrew's spent the past two summers working the Smokies on ant community ecology. When he grows up, he wants to be a dentist. But his true love will always be the insects in the Smokies.
Maggie Patrick, MS 2008
mpatric4@utk.edu
Maggie's thesis was on ant communities in treefall gaps in Costa Rica. She's now a PhD student in Geography.
lsouza@utk.edu
Lara's dissertation research focused on community invasibility and the controls on invasion in old field ecosystems. She's now working on a suite of projects in plant ecology and global change ecology at ORNL.
wbunn@utk.edu
Windy's thesis work focused on the temporal and spatial dynamics of forest communities in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She's now a fire ecologist at Grand Canyon National Park.
Matt Fitzpatrick, PhD 2008
mfitz2@utk.edu
Matt studied broad-scale distributions of invasive ant species, how dispersal by ants affects patterns of plant diversity, and other interesting problems in invasion biology, and macroecology. He is now a postdoc at Harvard Forest.
Kristin Lane , MA 2006
kristinlane2@yahoo.com
Kristin studied the combined and interactive effects of soil nutrient additions and plant invasions on insect communities.
Jaime Ratchford, MA 2005
jsr8@humboldt.edu
Jaime studied ant community structure and reassembly in Darlintoina fens and adjacent forests. She currently works at Oregon State University.
Nancy is preparing to attend Vet school.
Chris worked with JP on a project looking at how resources and temperature interact to affect leaf litter arthropods in the Smokies.
Kerri did her undergraduate Honors Thesis with us (mostly with Greg Crutsinger). This past summer, she did her field work on the causes and consequences of galling in Solidago altissima. Kerri is off to Rice University next year to pursue her PhD.
Mark is going to start in the Masters program here at UT, working with Joe Bailey and Jen Schweitzer.
Dana is going to Physician's Assistant school here in Tennessee.
Melissa is starting to think about grad school in ecology. She spent the summer doing restoration ecology in the wild mountains of Idaho.
Jessica isnow in grad school at Virginia Commonwealth where's she's working on predator-prey interactions in the tropics.
Raynelle did her undergraduate research at Humboldt State Univesity on the foraging behavior of Formica obscuripes. She also has worked with us on leaf litter ant diversity in the Smokies. Raynelle is going to be a graduate student at San Francisco State University.
Matt did his undergraduate research at Humboldt State on a variety of topics. He's now a graduate student at Northern Arizona University.
Sheilah did her undergraduate research at Humboldt State on the plant communities in Darlingtonia fens and adjacent upland habitats. She's now a graduate student at Humboldt State University.
Melissa Geraghty
Melissa (on the left) worked on the mesoecology of ants of the southern Appalachians and aquatic insects of the southeastern US.
rrdunn@ncsu.edu
Rob is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Zoology at North Carolina State University.
