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The Sheldon Lab is committed to supporting and fostering diversity and inclusion.
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Principal investigator
Kimberly Sheldon
Assistant Professor
ksheldon@utk.edu
Google Scholar Profile
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Postdoctoral Researchers
Amanda Wilson Carter
Postdoctoral Research Associate (Jan-Aug 2018)
NSF Postdoctoral Fellow (Sept 2018 – Present)
Website
Google Scholar Profile
Luis Carrasco
NIMBioS Postdoctoral Fellow (Oct 2018-Sept 2019)
Postdoctoral Research Associate (Oct 2019-Present)
Website
Google Scholar Profile
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Graduate students
Morgan Fleming
Morgan is starting her PhD in Fall 2020. She recently received a 3-year Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to pursue her work. As an undergraduate, Morgan published on the natural history of herpetofauna and assisted with dung beetle physiological research. She has strong interests in physiological ecology and impacts of climate change.
Maggie Mamantov
PhD Student
mmamanto@utk.edu
Maggie joined the lab in August 2016. She completed her undergraduate degree at Grinnell College in Iowa. In addition to research experiences at the University of Kentucky and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Maggie worked on an independent research project examining population structure of Formica exsectoides, a superconlonial ant species, across its North American range. She has strong interests in invasion biology and how biotic factors affect species ranges. Maggie is also passionate about sharing science with the public and fostering an interest in STEM. Check out her outreach here.
Anchal Padukone
PhD Student
Anchal joined the lab in August 2018. She completed her undergraduate degree at Princeton University. Anchal spent a semester at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, where she conducted senior thesis research on the influence of microenvironmental factors on the distribution of an insect vector of Chagas disease. After graduating, Anchal worked as a Princeton in Africa Fellow at the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya where she coordinated outreach and citizen science programs, helped manage the centre’s media and publications, and contributed to research on acacia ant community dynamics.
Claire Winfrey
PhD Student
Website
Claire joined the lab in August 2017. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. In addition to working with and publishing on herpetofauna, Claire completed an undergraduate research project examining the role of visual and non-visual cues in damselfly mate recognition (Winfrey & Fincke 2017). Claire received an NSF GRFP during her second year in the Sheldon Lab, and she successfully defended her Masters thesis in July 2020. She is headed to CU Boulder to start her PhD in Fall 2020.
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Undergraduate students
Jerame Brown
Jerame joined the lab in October 2019. He helped get the fall armyworm system off the ground. Jerame received a grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research in Spring 2020 for an independent research project in the lab.
Brianna Jacobs
Brianna joined the lab in September 2019. She has helped with several research projects related to dung beetle thermal physiology.
Connor Riley
Connor joined the lab in September 2019, the same month he started his BS in Microbiology at UT. He has previous research experience in both a medical entomology lab and an oceanographic institute in Florida. Connor received a grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research in Spring 2020 for an independent research project in the lab.
Abby Wells
Abby joined the lab in Spring 2019. She helped rear beetles for various lab projects. She received a grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research in Spring 2020 for an independent research project in the lab.
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Past Team Members
Previous Postdocs
Ethan B. Linck
Postdoctoral Researcher (Jun 2019 – Mar 2020)
Now an NSF Postdoctoral Researcher in the Witt Lab at UNM.
Website
Google Scholar Profile
Twitter
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Previous Lab Techs
Matt McGee
Matt worked in the lab from June-December 2017. He helped with beetle trapping in the Smokies, dung beetle breeding in the lab, and a warming experiment in the field. He also first-authored an article on breeding biology of a rare Ecuadorian bird. Matt started a Masters at Cal State Monterey Bay in August 2019.
Sarah Jayne Brawner
Sarah joined the lab in August 2017 as an undergraduate and received a BS in Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2018. She helped launch a new direction in the lab — gut microbiome research on dung beetles. She returned to the lab in November 2018 as a Lab Tech to help with a variety of ongoing and new projects. She started a PhD program at the University of Tennessee in Fall 2019.
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Previous Undergraduates
Will Kirkpatrick
Website
Will was in the lab from May 2017-August 2019. In 2017, he collected data for a manuscript on breeding biology of a tropical bird and presented at the Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement (EURēCA), the UT EEB undergraduate symposium, and UT Discovery Day. In 2018, Will received an undergraduate internship grant to carry out a summer project on behavioral responses of dung beetles to temperature change (Kirkpatrick & Sheldon in prep). Will started a PhD program in the Durrant Lab at the University of Arkansas in Fall 2019.
Shelby Collins
Shelby was in the lab from January-June 2018. In addition to being in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Shelby was part of the Vols Teach Program, which emphasizes field based experiences and is aimed at training those interested in a career in secondary teaching. Shelby helped with several outreach efforts in the lab, and she was the Education Coordinator for our summer research program with high school students of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
David Edwards
David was a lab member from May 2017-May 2018. David helped with dung beetle breeding experiments and worked on a sodium addition experiment. He also co-authored a manuscript on the breeding biology of a bird species from Ecuador.
Atira Sherrod
Atira was in the lab from September 2016-May 2017. She received her Associate of Science degree from Pellissippi State Technical Community College. She completed her B.S. in Biology at the University of Tennessee in 2016 with a concentration in Microbiology. Atira became particularly interested in ecology and evolutionary biology and took additional undergraduate courses to round out her education while working in the lab. 
She assisted with dung beetle research and worked on an independent project examining operative temperatures of beetles across seasons.
Anna Raney
Anna received a grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research for an independent project examining dung beetles in urban versus rural environments in Knoxville.
Bella Ritchie
Bella assisted with dung beetle brood ball collection and rearing of offspring in the lab.
Logan Hysen
Logan assisted with general animal husbandry and lab maintenance.
Kylie Hannahs
Kylie assisted with dung beetle brood ball collection and rearing of offspring in the lab.
Duncan Mccurry
He assisted with general animal husbandry and lab maintenance.