APSU Department of Biology

Welcome back Govs! 🌟

Zeus getting some local recognition! Don’t miss the bloom this year, Gov’s!

Farrow says the quirky flower is native to the Indonesian Islands and the smell is actually a clever evolutionary trick. "It broadcasts that smell, that smells like a rotting co**se, to bring in as many pollinators as they can," explained Farrow.

Full story: https://www.newschannel5.com/news/stinky-rare-co**se-flower-in-bloom-brings-in-huge-crowd-to-the-nashville-zoo

Zeus is blooming! The Nashville Zoo is streaming the event live here: https://www.nashvillezoo.org/veterinary-center

Don't miss this extraordinary event!

Good morning Govs and Happy Tuesday!

During the hailstorm earlier in the month, our greenhouse was damaged. This incident meant Zeus needed to be moved for protection. Zeus has been relocated to the Nashville Zoo and is due to bloom in approximately 2 weeks! If you are unfamiliar, Zeus is APSU's Amorphophallus titanum, AKA Co**se Plant. Its bloom lasts anywhere from 1-3 days and produces a smell that correlates with its nickname! This smell is important for attracting its pollinators.

If you want something to do over the Summer, consider visiting the Nashville zoo to visit Zeus int he coming days! **seplant

Good morning Govs and Happy Tuesday!

During the hailstorm earlier in the month, our greenhouse was damaged. This incident meant Zeus needed to be moved for protection. Zeus has been relocated to the Nashville Zoo and is due to bloom in approximately 2 weeks! If you are unfamiliar, Zeus is APSU's Amorphophallus titanum, AKA Co**se Plant. Its bloom lasts anywhere from 1-3 days and produces a smell that correlates with its nickname! This smell is important for attracting its pollinators.

If you want something to do over the Summer, consider visiting the Nashville zoo to visit Zeus int he coming days! **seplant

We love our community, Clarksville!

Remember our photo contest? Here are the super close runner ups! We appreciate everyone who took the time to participate! Just LOOK at some of those photos! 🌟

Honorable mentions:
Kallie Baker
Emma Schwartz
Clayton Barnes
Ashten Byard
Victoria Nave
Ralph Acosta
Brianna Cole
Tanner Cernick
Elizabeth Vatovec

It's FINALS time! If you have exams today or in the near future, take a moment to clear all of your stress with this amazing follow up post.

Remember a few months back we introduced the beta fish training graduate class? Well, Dr. Mollie Cashner's class shared their results, and those fish were trained! It is SPECTACTULAR to see! 🐟🐟

Congratulations on all of your hard work!

CONTEST WINNERS!

The photo contest was judged by: Dean Karen Meisch, Dean Chad Brooks, Dr. McLean Fahnestock & Dr. Sarah Lundin-Schiller!

🏆1st place: Jason Chavez-Rivas
🏆2nd place: Brandon Gulley
🏆3rd place: Madeline Thompson
🏆4th place: Jaron Sedlock
🏆5th place: Daniel Redwine

Congratulations students!

** We had MANY submissions and MANY runner ups... Keep your eyes peeled for some additional original APSU student photograph posts! We are all so impressed! **

Another Monday Motivation post!

Dr. Manisha Gupte's student, Sam Ramirez, won a 1st place award at the Tennessee Academy of Science Middle Collegiate Division Meeting over the weekend at Cumberland University! Her oral presentation was 1st in the Cell and Molecular Biology/ Chemistry/ Physics section.

Join us in congratulating her!

Here's a feel-good Friday story!

One of APSU's alumni's graduate thesis from 2014 was published this year in eBio!

The research was conducted as part of the requirements for Amelia Rinhart's Master of Science Degree in 2014.

Amelia Rinehart and Dr. Schiller were interested in whether dental plasticizers interacted with androgen receptors. Plasticizers are prevalent in the environment and previous studies have shown that many plasticizers are endocrine disruptors.

In the paper's acknowledgements, they thank and acknowledge Vickie S. Wilson, Gilbert R. Pitts, Karen A. Meisch, and Joseph R. Schiller.

Read the whole thing here:https://www.eaglehill.us/ebio-pdfs-regular/EBIO-011-Lundin-Schiller.pdf

Please join the department in congratulating these 4 students who won awards for their research presentations!

Last week 4 of the department's students presented and received top placing awards.

🌟Hannah Alloway is a graduate biology student who won 1st place for oral presentations!

🌟Comfort Ogbu is a graduate biology student who won 2nd place for oral presentations!

🌟Alexandra Baum is an undergraduate biology student who won 1st place for poster presentations!

🌟Spencer Trimpe is a graduate biology student who won 2nd place for poster presentations!

Students are encouraged to join Healthy Yards Clarksville Montgomery County and participate in our volunteer outreach events! See Michelle Rogers in SSC D132 for more information.

Free native plants Sunday, April 7, 2024! Healthy Yards Clarksville Montgomery County will have a tent at the Sunday on Strawberry Event 10:00-2:00, right next to the Pup's Plants store. We'll be giving away native plant seedlings and seeds, registering people for Healthy Yards and giving out yard signs. Ask us questions about your yard and native plants or have a conversation about the 300+ species of native bees in Tennessee!
Healthy Yards Clarksville Montgomery County is a collaboration between the APSU Center of Excellence for Field Biology at APSU, the City of Clarksville, and Montgomery County.

From the Custom's House Museum: For this month’s Sundays at 3:00 lecture, join Dr. Jack W. Sites Jr. for a deep dive into the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos Archipelago remains one of the most ecologically intact oceanic archipelagos on earth, and its unique climate, limited human settlement and relative isolation has resulted in the evolution of unique flora and fauna. Science-based species recovery efforts have achieved some spectacular results here, which deserve to be widely appreciated.

Dr. Sites is a retired Professor of Biology and Curator of Herpetology at Brigham Young University and an adjunct Professor of Biology at Austin Peay State University.

Here is another !

Jacob Lemon, an Austin Peay Graduate Alumni, will be attending medical school at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center starting this Fall 2024! Jacob Lemon attended Union University while majoring and minoring in general biology and chemistry, respectively. As an undergraduate student, he worked as a laboratory assistant, and one of his rotations involved working in the human gross anatomy lab. Jacob graduated summa cm laude in 2019. After undergraduate school, Jacob started working as a certified pharmacy technician and later began graduate school in the Department of Biology at Austin Peay State University (APSU) in 2021. As a graduate teaching assistant, he taught/prepped Human Anatomy & Physiology I labs. While working under his mentor Dr. Manisha Gupte, he presented their work at the Tennessee Academy of Science and won first place in oral presentations in 2021 and 2022. Also, Jacob co-authored a paper in the journal Cells. Jacob graduated APSU in 2022 after defending his thesis, entitled, “Isoform-Specific Role of Glycogen Synthase Kinase-3 in Obesity-Induced Glucose Intolerance.” After graduation, he taught at APSU as an adjunct faculty instructor teaching Human Anatomy and Physiology II lecture and labs for the Spring 2023 semester. He is now accepted into medical school at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and will begin his medical schooling in August 2024.

Please join us in congratulating him!

📢📢Deadline has been extended 📢📢

Do you write creative social media posts? Put your skills to work. Create a biology themed social media post and win a prize! Submit your best original biology post to [email protected] for a chance to win a gift card and have your post featured on the Department of Biology social media pages.

Submit by 4/10. Good luck!

The APSU Native Plants sale is open online now. These plants are grown without pesticides that could harm your pollinators. Lots of species of perennials, shrubs and trees.

AP Marketplace

Dr. Mollie Cashner, an Associate Professor here at Austin Peay, is teaching a Graduate Level Animal Behavior class this semester and they are doing some spectacular research this semester! The class is studying innate versus learned behavior in Betta splendins (Betta fighting fish). This species is specifically unique due to their observable, innate aggressive behavior. This semester the students will not only be observing behavior but training their fish to do tricks! Tasks like jumping through hoops or swimming through mazes are all possible through operant conditioning done in class. This is the first semester female Bettas are being studied. The students each have their own fish, housed in isolation from other Bettas. The Department of Biology is hoping to follow up at the end of the semester to see what cool tricks these fish have learned!

Here is some !

APSU Alumni Josh Kraft just accepted a tenure track position at Truman State University in Missouri! He will be starting out as an assistant professor of sustainable agriculture!

He went from being a chef, to attending a community college, to attending Austin Peay, to going onto grad school at Purdue, where he received a National Science Foundation graduate research scholarship!

He was a previous student of Dr. Baskauf here at APSU and remained in touch since leaving.

Please join us in congratulating him!

🌟Updated Due Date! Submit by April 10th! Good luck students! 🌟

📢📢Another Contest APSU students! 📢📢

📸 Enter your best photo with a biology theme.

📸 Top 5 winners will receive $50 gift cards, & their picture will be professionally framed and mounted on our wall in the Department of Biology office.

📸 Winners will be announced / unveiled at a reception on April 17th. This event will be held in the afternoon and refreshments will be served (more details to come).

📸 Submit photos to department at [email protected] with “Framed Photo Contest” subject line.

📸 Pictures will be judged and chosen by celebrity staff!

Good luck students ❣️ We can't wait to see what you share ❣️

📢📢CALLING ALL APSU STUDENTS 📢📢

Submit your best ORIGINAL content for a social media post with a biology theme to the department at [email protected]!

Good luck everyone! 🍀

Congratulations to Dept. of Biology professor Stefan Woltmann on becoming the Direct of the Center of Excellence for Field Biology at APSU starting August 1! Well deserved!

Join us in congratulating Dr. Stefan Woltmann, who was named director of the Center of Excellence for Field Biology, effective August 1!

📰 👉 https://bit.ly/4a9ggX6

In 2006, Tennessee joined in with exposing state legislators to undergraduate research through the first-ever Tennessee Posters at the Capitol. On February 14th of this year, this tradition carried on as more undergraduates from universities across Tennessee presented their research through this event in Nashville. These students were selected to represent the best undergraduate research in STEM disciplines. Legislators met students from their districts and saw first-hand the outstanding research being conducted by undergraduates.

Nine students from Austin Peay participated this year, with 2 representing the Department of Biology. Trinity Mobley and Alexandra Baum were able to represent their research to further varying topics in biology.

Congratulations students!

The Department of Biology is excited to announce that Jones Adjei, a Laboratory Manager with us since 2019, was officially sworn in as a U.S. citizen on 21 February, 2024.

Jones studied biology as an undergraduate in his home country of Ghana and earned his M.S. in Biology at Eastern New Mexico University. While there, he met a lovely woman named Elvir on Facebook! Trouble was, she lived in Georgia. Then by chance, he was scheduled to attend a major microbiology conference in Georgia and they were able to meet in person. The rest, as they say, is history!

Elvir and Jones were married. Jones graduated and was looking for a full-time position in microbiology. When their first child, daughter Josie, was just two days old, Jones started his career at APSU. Since then, they have added a son named Enoch. The children are now ages 4 and 1.

Jones says the process of getting citizenship required lots of paperwork and waiting, through multiple processes. He’s had a green card for over three years and applied for citizenship. His application was recently approved and went through the swearing-in ceremony in Nashville on February 21, 2024. Citizenship will make it easier for Jones and his family to travel. They are hoping to travel next year to Ghana to visit, Jones’s first time back in over five years, to let Josie and Enoch meet their grandmother.

Congratulations, Jones!

Congratulations to Gracey Suggs, an undergraduate student in our Biology program, for getting accepted into the Vanderbilt V-EXCEL cancer research program for this summer!

The V-EXCEL Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center sponsored by the American Cancer Society provides a unique training experience that builds upon Vanderbilt's extraordinary record of research, training, and fostering diversity in biomedical science with the goal of promoting a pathway to cancer research and medicine careers for undergraduate students.

Instream barriers contribute to population isolation of a small‐bodied, benthic, headwater‐specialist fish (Percidae) Ecology of Freshwater Fish is a fish biology journal spanning conservation to fishery science. We publish research concerning lakes, reservoirs, rivers, & streams.

Congrats to Jake Barret (MS 2024, Cashner Lab), who presented his thesis work at the Southern Division of the American Fisheries Society, a conference with over 600 professionals, academics, and students and won runner up for the best graduate student presentation. Jake's thesis focused on personality traits and colonization decisions by the Creek Chub (Semotilus atromaculatus). Congrats!

Registration open now. $75 for five-week course. https://epay.apsu.edu/C20023_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=1068