Fully funded 3 years PhD studentship for Uk and international students
Social and ecological drivers of parental care
Institution: Queen's University Belfast, School of Biological Sciences
Supervisors: Dr Isabella Capellini (QUB); Dr Domhnall Jennings (QUB); Dr Catherine Sheard (University of Aberdeen)
There
are astonishing differences in whether, how, and for how long, animals
care for their offspring. Despite the considerable research on parental
care, our understanding of how and why care diversity originates in
species lacking care and of what promotes its persistence over
evolutionary time is very limited.
Aim.
By combining state of the art phylogenetic comparative approaches and
large scale datasets of parental care forms across hundreds of species
in highly diverse taxonomic groups, this project will test hypotheses on
whether species’ reproductive ecology, social behaviour and offspring
characteristics, promote the evolutionary origin and/or maintenance of
male and female parental care behaviours in vertebrates (amphibians,
mammals, fish, dinosaurs, birds) and/or invertebrates (e.g.
crustaceans).
The student will have the opportunity to shape the project to better fit their own research interests by selecting which questions to address and in which taxonomic group. The project benefits by access to already assembled datasets of parental care diversity in thousands of amphibians, mammals and fish (e.g. Furness and Capellini 2019, 2022; Vanadzina et al. 2021; West and Capellini 2016).
The student will have the opportunity to shape the project to better fit their own research interests by selecting which questions to address and in which taxonomic group. The project benefits by access to already assembled datasets of parental care diversity in thousands of amphibians, mammals and fish (e.g. Furness and Capellini 2019, 2022; Vanadzina et al. 2021; West and Capellini 2016).
Deadline: 7th of February 2025
Full project description and link to application here.