Remote Internship on Mammalian Social Evolution

 

General information

We are offering remote internships for students interested in social systems and especially in mammalian social evolution. The students will help us to create a database on what is known about social organisation of wild living mammals, taking intra-specific variation in social organisation (IVSO) into account. For this, the students will do online searches for peer-reviewed publications and enter data into an existing database. They will join and interact with an international team of students and researchers working in France and the United States. All communication will be online via zoom and slack. Students will prepare presentations, write a scientific report and obtain a letter of reference about their internship. With this they can apply for ECTs at their home universities. The internship will be supervised by Dr. Carsten Schradin from the IPHC-CNRS in Strasbourg and his PhD student Charlotte-Anais Olivier.

 

Aims of the internship:

1. The students learn how to work scientifically.

2. Scientific data are produced.

3. Students learn how to write a scientific report.

 

Taxa to work on: Marsupials, rodents,  carnivores.

Duration of internship: Minimum duration is 8 weeks.

When to start: September / October.

Communication via zoom, and slack.

International zoom seminar on Tuesdays at 17:00.

Zoom meetings students IVSO project every Thursday at 15:00.

Data sharing: This will be done via dropbox.

 

Work schedule

Week 1: Prepare oral presentation about the taxa you will be working on / Prepare species list / Write introduction

Week 2: Data accuracy test / Write material and methods / Commence data collection

Week 3 to 7: Data collection / Prepare results section

Week 8: Write results section and short discussion / Finalise written report / Prepare PPT about results of the project

 

Literature:

Jaeggi, A. V., Miles, M.I., Festa-Bianchet, M., Schradin, C, Hayes, L.D. (2020). Variable social organization is ubiquitous in Artiodactyla and probably evolved from pair-living ancestors. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 287(1926): 20200035.   

Schradin, C., L. D. Hayes, N. Pillay, and C. Bertelsmeier. 2018. The evolution of intraspecific variation in social organization. Ethology 124, 527-536, doi:10.1111/eth.12752.

Schradin C. 2017. Comparative studies need to rely both on sound natural history data and on excellent statistical analysis. Royal Society Open Science. 4: 170346.

Valomy, M., Hayes, L.D., Schradin, C. 2015. Social organization in Eulipotyphla: evidence for a social shrew. Biology Letters 11.

 

How to apply? Send a 1 page motivation letter (why you are interested, when you could start) and your CV to carsten.schradin@iphc.cnrs.fr and charlotte-anais.olivier@iphc.cnrs.fr.