PHD OPPORTUNITIES at Old Dominion University. Website: http://www.ericlwalters.org. Location: Norfolk, Virginia, USA. Duration: Graduate degree - typically 5 years. Application Deadline: 12/01/2011. Number of Openings: at least 2. Job Description: I am looking for at least two PhD students to start in my lab in August 2012 at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. I have recently moved to Old Dominion from Cornell University and am starting up my lab and graduate student program. I have funding to cover both tuition and a teaching assistantship for PhD candidates. Please visit my web site to learn more about my research program. http://www.ericlwalters.org I tend to wear a number of hats and am interested in having a student work in one of the following areas: behavioral ecology, animal behavior, community ecology, conservation biology, quantitative ecology, or modeling. Although most of my work has involved birds or mammals, I am happy to have students work on other taxa. Whether students want to be involved in my current work with cooperatively breeding acorn woodpeckers or their own system is fine by me. Qualifications: Candidates should be highly motivated, have an undergraduate GPA>3.5, a GRE (v+q)>1300, and strong quantitative skills. To Apply: If you are interested in working in my lab, please visit the "joining us" portion of my web site and follow the directions therein. Please contact me well before 1 December 2011 if you want to be considered for one of the positions.http://www.ericwalters.ca/joining.htm
PHD SCHOLARSHIPS: Marine Resource Use by Tropical Seabirds. Marine Resource Use by Seabirds in the Browse and Bonaparte Basins, North West Australia. Two PhD projects are available (for Australian or international students) in marine vertebrate ecology as part of a research project funded by industry partners to investigate marine resource use by tropical seabirds. Specifically these PhDs seek to identify links between the marine environment, foraging strategies and at-sea distribution of seabirds by focusing on ranging and foraging behaviors. The Browse and Bonaparte Basins are a significant growth area for oil and gas exploration and extraction and, as such, this research also seeks to identify measures to improve ongoing management of the biological assets in the region. Fieldwork for the project will be based in the Browse and Bonaparte Basins off north Western Australia and will focus on the ecology of tropical sulid, frigatebird, tern and noddy species to investigate patterns of resource use at both the species and community level. These projects will involve deployment of tailored configurations of GPS/Satellite tags on tropical seabirds to assess ranging and foraging behaviors. Additional targeted hardware will be incorporated in a sub-set of positional loggers to identify fine-scale foraging strategies. The above field approaches will be complimented by dietary analyses using traditional methods and stable isotopes. Desktop analyses of species level and community level marine resource use will involve integrating bio-logging data with remotely sensed marine data. The nature of this research requires much travel on marine vessels and extended periods of remote-area fieldwork in tropical environments. Resources in form of funding, equipment and technical support will be provided for both PhD projects. Each student will need to obtain a scholarship (domestic or international) from Monash University. Thus, a first class Honours or Masters degree is essential. Evidence of relevant field and laboratory skills is important and experience working with bio-loggers and/or seabirds is desirable. Publications in international peer-reviewed scientific journals will also be looked upon favorably. Top-up scholarships of up to $7k/annum are available for high achieving applicants. The starting date is as soon as possible, but no later than April 2012. Closing date for expressions of interest is COB Friday, 7 October 2011. Please submit a cover letter and comprehensive CV with contact details for two referees to: DR ROHAN CLARKE, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia 3800 (EM: rohan.clarke@monash.edu). For further information, contact Dr Rohan Clarke (PH: +61 3 99051968, EM: rohan.clarke@monash.edu).