vendredi 24 mai 2019

PhD position on 'Mechanisms underlying communication and cooperation in meerkats'

A PhD positionfunded up to 4 yearswill beavailable from September 2019
 at the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland (https://www.ieu.uzh.ch/en/research/behaviour/cognition.html), to work on group coordination mechanismsin the cooperatively breeding meerkat (Suricata suricatta).  
Underthe supervision of Prof. MartaManser, you will investigate cognitive and/orphysiological mechanisms involved in vocal communication and cooperation. The focus will be onexperiments on captive meerkats (our group at the University and in zoos), with the potential to complement findings in our habituated field population at the Kalahari Meerkat Project inSouth Africa (http://www.kalahari-meerkats.com/kmp). The student will have the opportunity to collaborate with world experts in applying moderntechniquesandadvanceddata analyses.We seek highly motivated candidates, with a MScdegree in Animal Behaviour or a related subject,who showa great interest in mechanistic questions and to applymodernmethods.Applicants should havework experience on animals in captivity or in the wild,beingused to work independently, and fluent in English (German knowledge isnot necessary attheUniversity, butof advantagewhen working in zoos). Please send your application by email as a single pdf document (before the 15thof June 2019) to the address given below and include:1)1 A4-page statement about previous research(main finding, main challenges)and future research motivation(1-2 main questions of interest/hypotheses to test)2)CV (with publication list) and graduate and undergraduate degree certificates3)full contact details of two scientific refereesSelected candidates will be invited for interviews at the end of June 2019. For additional information on the position please contact Marta Manser via email.Prof. Dr. Marta ManserAnimal Behaviour, EBESUniversity ofZurichemail: marta.manser@ieu.uzh.chZurich, Switzerland