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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). 

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Undergraduate students

Jerame Brown

Jerame joined the lab in October 2019. He is helping to get the fall armyworm system off the ground!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Abby Wells

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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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

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bella Ritchie

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Logan Hysen

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Kylie Hannahs

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Duncan Mccurry