Our new sheep research project is now underway, with the first trip by Dr Stephan Leu to Fowlers Gap, to trial the new tracking collars and start planning the first experiments! Stephan’s project will investigate movement, foraging efficiency, life history and the benefits of social behaviour in rangeland sheep.
We have four quite different PhD projects in the research group that have been advertised today. These are working across four species and some similar research questions. Three of the projects are based at Fowlers Gap which is an amazing field site in the arid zone near Broken Hill, where we have worked for the past 13 years. Work on the zebra finch in the wild, continues our ongoing into this species, where we have been the only lab in recent years trying to understand the ecology of the species in the wild (more details on that research here). The project with Stephan Leu is a new direction for us, into the behaviour and ecology of sheep in the rangeland. This project will use techniques that we have previously used in both birds and lizards, but use them in an applied context.
The project on the sleepy lizard is in collaboration with Martin Whiting’s group, also at Macquarie University. We are hoping to recruit students onto all of these projects in 2017, in order to maximise the outcomes from current Australian Research Council funding to Griffith and Leu. Due to this funding the projects are well supported and will provide great research opportunities. We have a good history in the group of graduating our PhD students with a good number of peer-reviewed papers and a range of different skills that will enhance further career opportunities.
Further Details
1: Adapting to a foreign climate: the reproductive ecology of the house sparrow in Australia
The house sparrow (Passer domesticus) was introduced into Australia in the 1860’s and has since become well established across a broad range of climates in both countries. This project will take advantage of this ‘experimental’ introduction to focus on behavioural and physiological adaptations to different climates through a field-based comparative approach. This research will complement our existing work on related questions in endemic Australian species and will provide insight into the capacity of avian species to adapt to changing climates. This project will involve periods of field-work in Broken Hill, Armidale and Hobart in Australia, along with a range of behavioural, molecular and physiological assays. The project will involve collaboration with other groups in Australia and the US.
2: The challenge of growing in a hot climate (in the zebra finch)
In recent years we have characterised the very hot conditions in which zebra finches are raised (with nests often reaching temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius, as well as identifying adverse effects of these conditions on embryonic development, offspring growth, and adult sperm. This project is supported by an ARC funded project and will investigate the adaptations that this iconic and well-studied species has to deal with the extreme climate in which it lives. The project will take a variety of approaches including behavioural work, and assays of metabolism and physiology, and combine fieldwork and laboratory work. The project will be run in collaboration with Dr Christine Cooper (Curtin University, Western Australia), Prof. Pierre Deviche (Arizona State University, US), and Prof. Pat Monaghan (Glasgow, UK).
3: Social structuring and life-history in free-ranging domestic sheep
In this project we will examine the importance of social structure and collective intelligence to life-history trade-offs and productivity in domestic sheep in the rangelands of Australia. The project will use tools from social network theory and spatial ecology to characterise individual and group behaviour and investigate their effect on individual quality and productivity (lambs and wool) in this challenging, but economically important part of Australia. The project will be based at Fowlers Gap (near Broken Hill in the arid zone) and require field work and well-developed analytical skills. This work will be run in collaboration with partners in the pastoral industry and be jointly supervised by Dr Stephan Leu (also at Macquarie University).
4: Parasite transmission dynamics in an Australian lizard
This project will investigate the relationship between host spatial and social behaviour and bacterial transmission. It combines social network theory, spatial ecology and wildlife epidemiology to determine how different bacterial strains are transmitted through the population and how individual behaviour and consequently population social structure changes as a function of infection status. The project combines the analysis of a very comprehensive (already collected) dataset with scope for the student to develop his/her own ideas and conduct fieldwork. The student should be interested in social networks and disease modelling and have strong analytical skills. This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Stephan Leu and A/Prof Martin Whiting (both at Macquarie University). We also have strong relationships with disease modelling colleagues in the US.
Application
The Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University is a vibrant environment which offers excellent support to postgraduate students. A Macquarie University Excellence in Research Scholarship has already been assigned to one of these projects, but there are other scholarship opportunities available to suitably competitive candidates. International candidates are welcome to apply for any of the projects listed above.
The 2014 MQRES full-time stipend rate is $26,682 pa tax exempt for 3 years (indexed annually). In addition to external grant support for projects, there is additional internal funding (up to $17,000) available to cover direct research expenses and conference travel.
Applicants should ideally have a research-based MSc in a related discipline (with a minimum 50% research component), and additional relevant research experience, qualifications, and details of awards or prizes. For projects 1, 2, and 4 an ability to work in remote and harsh conditions as well as experience in capturing and handling animals is desirable. A driving licence is required for all projects.
Applications should include 1) your CV, 2) a brief statement of your reasons for applying (max. 500 words) and the project you are applying to work on, 3) contact details of two academic referees, 4) your nationality (for scholarship eligibility purposes). Applications should be submitted electronically as a single PDF file.
Applications for these positions (and any initial enquiries) should be emailed by 7th April 2017 to: simon.griffith@mq.edu.au
Prof. Simon Griffith, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
One of the papers from Enrico Sorato’s PhD work was published today in the Journal of Animal Ecology. In the paper, we showed that in the chestnut-crowned babbler,
individuals suffer a cost of hanging around with their group mates, even if they are not actively involved in feeding offspring. That’s because over the course of a breeding attempt the foragers have to move further into the territory away from the nest to find enough food, incurring greater costs of moving and foraging. This cost, which has not been considered before may help to understand individual decisions about when to stay and when to leave a social group, and will contribute to the optimal group size. The paper is entitled The price of associating with breeders in the cooperatively breeding chestnut-crowned babbler: foraging constraints, survival and sociality, and can be found here.
Griffith Ecology Lab 