10-16-26 Trina Chou publishes first dissertation chapter
Trina's first dissertation chapter, on the effects of infection by the fungal pathogen Bd on acoustic signals in spring peepers, was published today in Ecology & Evolution! You can read it here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.72350
9-27-25 UTK Hosts Inaugural Southeastern Conference on Animal Behavior
Four lab members – graduate students Trina Chou, Ashlesh Pattanaik, and Katrina Pfennig, and undergraduate student Miles Draper – presented posters at the inaugural SECAB conference hosted at UTK! Postdoc Olivia Harris gave a talk as the first Collaborative for Animal Behavior-funded postdoc.
8-18-25 Katrina Pfennig joins the lab as a PhD student in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Katrina Pfennig begins her PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary biology this fall semester. Check out Katrina's past publications on spadefoot tadpoles in Ichthyology & Herpetology and ring-necked snakes in the Journal of Experimental Biology, and stay tuned for developments in her dissertation research. Welcome, Katrina!
8-1-25 Dr. Olivia Harris wins competitive CoLAB Postdoc Fellowship, joins lab
The Collaborative for Animal Behavior (CoLAB) ran a competitive search for a postdoctoral fellow who would work with at least two members of CoLAB and establish new research directions. Dr. Olivia Harris received the fellowship for her proposed work to understand how bumblebee signal detection is altered in visually noisy, UV-deficient environments, such as those created in controlled-environment agriculture. She joined the Tanner Lab, as well as the lab of Dr. Claire Hemingway (also of UTK EEB and Psychology & Neuroscience), on August 1.
5-2-25 Tanner Lab members take home four awards at the EEB Spring Celebration
Four members of our lab won awards at the 2025 Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Spring celebration.
Ashlesh Pattanaik and Trina Chou both received the Riechert Graduate Student Award to support their summer research.
Lauren Shinn was awarded the EEB Outstanding Undergraduate award, recognizing her all around success in EEB and her research in the Tanner and Stockmaier labs.
Owen Singleton was awarded the Beagle Memorial Award in Evolutionary Ecology.
Congrats to all the award winners!
Ashlesh Pattanaik and Trina Chou both received the Riechert Graduate Student Award to support their summer research.
Lauren Shinn was awarded the EEB Outstanding Undergraduate award, recognizing her all around success in EEB and her research in the Tanner and Stockmaier labs.
Owen Singleton was awarded the Beagle Memorial Award in Evolutionary Ecology.
Congrats to all the award winners!
4-25-25 Trina Chou wins $5,000 Graduate Student Research Award
PhD candidate Trina Chou won a competitive Graduate Student Research Award to support her work on green treefrogs. Congrats, Trina!
4-19-25 Ashlesh Pattanaik awarded Theodore Cohn grant from the Orthopterists' Society
PhD student Ashlesh Pattanaik won a competitive research grant from the Orthopterists' Society to support his proposed work on the evolution of baffling in tree crickets. Great work, Ashlesh!
4-15-25 Owen Singleton presents at the Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement (EURēCA)
Owen presented his Faculty Research Assistantship Fund-supported research on green treefrogs. Owen sampled water bodies across East Tennessee to determine whether green treefrogs, which are new to East Tennessee, were present or absent. Using ArcGIS to map his data and supplementing his own data with data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Owen worked with Trina Chou to find out where green treefrogs are breeding in our region and measure the temporal and spectral characteristics of their advertisement calls.
3-29-25 Lauren Shinn wins poster award at the CISAB Animal Behavior Conference
Lauren Shinn presented her undergraduate research project investigating the effects of within-individual variation in call rate on male-male competition at the Center for the Integrative Study for Animal Behavior's annual Animal Behavior Conference at Indiana University. She won a prize for the best undergraduate poster presentation! Great job, Lauren.
3-11-25 Trina Chou advances to PhD candidacy
Congratulations, Trina, on a successful prospectus defense!
6-29-24 Tanner participates in the Animal Behavior Society's Annual Outreach Fair
PI Tanner traveled to London, Ontario, Canada to present results from collaborative research with the Mark Bee (University of Minnesota) and Kim Hoke (Colorado State University) labs at the Animal Behavior Society's annual conference. The Society conducts an annual Outreach Fair as part of the conference, in which scientists present their work to local families. This year's Tanner Lab activity introduced more than 100 people -- mostly families with children under 10 -- to acoustic communication in frogs. We collaborated with Katie Krueger (left) to deliver the activity.
5-16-24 Chou and Shinn take home Beagle Memorial Award Honors
First year PhD student Trina Chou and undergraduate student Lauren Shinn were each honored by the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department with the Beagle Memorial Award in Evolutionary Biology. The Beagle provides stipends in support of evolutionary biology research. Congratulations to Trina and Lauren on their awards!
4-23-24: Lauren Shinn and Eva Kent present their research at UTK's EURECA Conference
Lauren and Eva have been working to analyze recordings of Hyla chrysoscelis calls. They measured within- and between-individual variation in call traits and looked for site differences in calls recorded across East Tennessee. They presented their results at the annual Exhibition of Undergraduate REsearch Creative Achievement (EUReCA) conference held at UTK.
4-4-24: Trina Chou receives NSF GRFP Honorable Mention
Congratulations, Trina, on receiving an Honorable Mention in this year's NSF Graduate Research Fellowship competition!
1-4-24: Sasha Ewing joins the lab as Lab Manager
Welcome, Sasha!