UTC students, accompanied by Dr. Rich Walker, attended the Southeastern Fishes Council last fall. From left: Will Meyer, Rio Palmeria, Tyler Davis, Olivia Daugherty, Dr. Rich Walker, Levi Wright and Drew Wildman.
On the first day of his junior year, Tyler Davis was walking to class when a poster with a fish on it caught his attention.
“I saw a trout on a piece of paper and I like fly fishing. So I was like, ‘Oh, fly fishing club or something,’” he said. “It was a poster for Dr. Walker’s freshwater ecology. It has nothing to do with trout at all, really. It just caught my eye.”
He was the first student to approach Dr. Rich Walker to learn more about the program.
Two years later, Davis received a student travel award for the work he did in Walker’s research lab at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Davis, a senior environmental science major from Gallatin, Tennessee, was one of four UTC undergraduates who presented at the 51st annual meeting of the Southeastern Fishes Council last fall in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The conference features researchers who study non-game freshwater fish species—the darters, minnows and other small fishes that often receive less attention than bass and trout.
“This conference is really a place where people who study non-game fishes can get together and talk about the fun and exciting research and aspects of things that they’re working on with these non-game fishes,” said Walker, assistant professor in the UTC Department of Biology, Geology and Environmental Science.
Walker brought four undergraduates to present posters: Davis, Olivia Daugherty, Levi Wright and Drew Wildman.
All four students presented research connected to Walker’s ongoing work examining the ecological effects of periodical cicadas on freshwater streams. The team focused on how major cicada broods in 2024 and 2025 influenced fish feeding behavior.
Davis’ research focused on fish stomach contents from streams sampled across multiple states. The group originally hypothesized that mouth size might determine whether fish consumed cicadas. This year, Davis changed his focus.
“I thought it had more to do with life history and where they are in the water column,” Davis said.
Because cicadas float, he expected surface-feeding fish to consume them most frequently.
“What I found was that it’s not the case at all,” he continued. “It’s like the middle water column that is completely outcompeting the top water column. The bottom feeders are catching what’s left over.”
At the conference, Davis received a Bosuchung Student Travel Award, which helps with the travel costs for undergraduate presenters.
Olivia Daugherty, a senior environmental science major and Brock Scholar, walked away with the Bob and Fran Casher Best Undergraduate Poster Presentation for her honors thesis titled “Sound Versus Silence: Investigating Fish Foraging Behavior in Relation to Cicada Sex Differences.”
Daugherty’s project focused on what happens when cicadas fall into streams and whether fish prefer males or females. Female cicadas are typically larger and carry eggs, while males are smaller and produce the loud buzzing associated with brood emergences.
Walker said the goal was to determine whether fish are selectively foraging based on those differences, including whether the males’ sounds change how fish respond when a cicada hits the water.
Olivia Daugherty
The four UTC posters at the conference complemented one another, which Davis said made for an even more interesting presentation.
“Drew Wildman was to my right and he would point at my poster,” Davis explained, “and then when they got to me, I’d give them my whole spiel. I’d talk about how this directly correlated to Levi’s poster and how his poster and my poster directly correlated to Olivia’s poster.”
Walker said that Chattanooga’s location along the Tennessee River makes it a perfect site for fish ecology research.
“We have over 320-plus species,” he said. “This is a very diverse group of animals to study.”
That biodiversity gives students access to a “laboratory” just minutes from campus. For students like Davis, who changed his major from chemistry to environmental science after his freshman year, the setting was a big bonus.
“Chattanooga is a massive hub for environmental science and everything that has to do with that,” Davis said. “There’s not a ton of other schools like ours where there are so many opportunities. We have the Tennessee River. We have the Tennessee Aquarium right beside us.
“We have all these different organizations that work pretty closely with us and honestly give us a great environment to learn.”
Learn more
Biology, Geology and Environmental Science
