The child of scientist parents, Tennessee native Mark Genung couldn’t imagine being anything other than a scientist himself. Genung did his undergraduate degree in biology at the University of Tennessee and stayed on for graduate school, earning a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology in the labs of Jennifer Schweitzer and Joseph Bailey. His dissertation focused on the interactions among goldenrod, its pollinators, and other insects—one example of the indirect genetic effects a species can have within an ecosystem. Currently a postdoc at Rutgers University, Genung aims to research the temporal stability of crop-pollinating insect populations.
Jennifer Schweitzer, an associate professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, earned her PhD at Northern Arizona University. Her lab’s research homes in on the connections between soil and plant genetics in species ranging from Australian eucalyptus, showy goldenrod in the southeastern U.S., and coastal evergreens in Hawaii.
Also at the University of Tennessee, associate professor Joseph Bailey has spent more than a decade studying the effects that genetic variation in an ecosystem’s dominant species has on biodiversity and other ecosystem functions. In 2009, he received a “Future Fellowship” award from the Australian Research Council to study how eucalyptus evolution might influence Australia’s biodiversity. “I suspect that indirect genetic effects will unify many disciplines in science and be the next major ...
