Biology Research

Katrin Kellner

Katrin Kellner

Title: Research Assistant Professor

Department: Biology
Building: HPR 140
Email:kkellner@uttyler.edu
Phone: (903)-566-7280

Degrees

Post doc, The University of Texas at Austin, 2010-2013, Evolution of Host-symbiont relationships & Microbial Ecology

Post doc, University of Regensburg, Germany, 2009-2010, Infectious Diseases & Chemical Ecology

Doctor of Natural Sciences (German PhD equivalent), University of Regensburg, Germany, 2005-2009, Evolution, Genetics & Behavior

Diploma of Biology (German Master's equivalent), University of Regensburg, Germany, 2001-2005, Zoology, Genetics, Botany

Vordiplom (similar to undergraduate studies), University of Regensburg, Germany, 1999-2005, Biology, Chemistry, Physics

Teaching Experience

BIOL 1305 General Biology I

BIOL 1306 General Biology II

BIOL 1106 General Biology I Laboratory

BIOL 4132 Entomology Laboratory

Molecular Ecology & Evolution Laboratory Class (University of Regensburg)

Training and Supervision of individual undergraduate student's projects, two Bachelor's thesis projects and two Master's thesis projects

 

Research Interests

My research examines the evolutionary biology of complex systems with a heavy emphasis on ant societies. Ants are well-suited model systems because their societies range from small aggregations of distantly related individuals to colonies composed of perfect clones. Moreover, the dominance of ants in low to mid latitudes was undoubtedly facilitated by the symbioses ants form with bacteria and fungi.

Themes of my research include behavioral genetics, population genetics, mating systems, chemical ecology and communication, microbial ecology, disease management and the evolutionary biology of microbial symbioses.

Much of my recent research has investigated evolutionary genetics and intergenomic epistasis of range expansion of mutualisms. Important collaborators on these topics are Timothy Linksvayer (evolutionary genetics) at the University of Pennsylvania and Ulrich Mueller (intergenomic epistasis) at the University of Texas at Austin. With the latter I currently have an active collaborative NSF grant (DEB – 1354629). Other sources of funding include the Texas Museum of Natural Science.

To find out more about me and my research, please see my publication list at Google Scholar and Research Gate

 

Interested students are encouraged to contact me!