We are looking for a student who wishes to design their own PhD research project researching fitness benefits and heritability of long-term partnerships. You will be supervised by Hannah Dugdale (RUG; https://hannahdugdale.wordpress.com), Simon Griffith (MQ; https://griffithecology.com), and David S Richardson (Univerity of East Anglia, UK; https://people.uea.ac.uk/david_richardson).

This is a double degree at RUG and MQ. For the first two-years you will be based at RUG and embedded in the Seychelles Warbler Project (http://seychelles-warbler-project.group.shef.ac.uk). You will conduct fieldwork in the Seychelles for a minimum of two seasons (up to 3 months per season), with a COVID-19 contingency plan. For the second two-years you will be based in Australia on the MQ campus. You will be part of a team of PhD students, post-docs, and staff who are using long-term individual-based datasets of natural populations to improve understanding of life-history evolution.

As a PhD scholarship student, you will develop your own research project in consultation with the associated supervisor(s). You will conduct independent and original scientific research, report results via peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and ultimately a PhD thesis. The PhD thesis has to be completed within four years. Being part of a cutting-edge research programme, you will receive training in the form of hands-on instruction, advanced courses, summer/winter schools, as well as complementary workshops on generic research and transferable skills. Special attention is paid to training activities directed towards your future (academic or non-academic) career after the PhD trajectory, in the context of the RUG’s Career Perspective Series, and the Research Training Certification Program at MQ.

Project
In socially monogamous species, pair-bonds may persist over multiple breeding seasons, which can have important fitness consequences. For example, the persistence of long-term pair-bonds can promote cooperation in territory and nest defence, and improve coordination in offspring care. Nevertheless, divorce (whereby previously pair-bonded birds are both alive in the next breeding season but at least one pair-bonds with a new mate) is common in socially monogamous species. Why some pair-bonds persist whereas others do not is an important question for understanding the evolution of life-history strategies.

You will design your project to investigate the evolution of pair-bond behaviour. In the Netherlands, you will have the long-term Seychelles warbler dataset available to address this question. Seychelles warblers are cooperative breeders and we have detailed life-history data of over 2,000 birds, spanning more than 30 years. Potential research questions are age-specific selective pressures and the heritability of long-term pair-bonding and divorcing. In Australia, you will work at a comparative level to investigate questions such as the strength of pair bonds; behavioural interactions between partners; and value of affiliative behaviours in dozens of species across one of the most diverse avifaunal assemblages in the world. These empirical data will be combined with life-history, and ecological data to understand the evolution of partnerships.

References
Griffith SC (2019) Cooperation and coordination in socially monogamous birds: Moving away from a focus on sexual conflict. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7, 617–15.

Raj Pant S, Hammers M, Komdeur J et al. (2020) Age‐dependent changes in infidelity in Seychelles warblers. Molecular Ecology, doi: doi:10.1111/mec.15563.

We are looking for a candidate who:

• holds a (research) master degree (or will graduate before appointment date) in a relevant field, such as Evolutionary Biology with a grade level of at least a distinction (75% or greater)
• is curiosity driven and passionate about fundamental research in the context of quantitative genetics and life-history evolution
• has previous experience of bird ringing and conducting fieldwork in harsh environments (training will be provided)
• has strong quantitative skills (training will be provided)
• has experience in extracting and analysing data from databases or large datasets (training will be provided)
• is a team player, willing to work with a diverse group of researchers and technicians, and can also work independently
• has strong communication skills and is motivated to disseminate results to both scientific peers and a broad audience
• is proficient in the English language (https://www.rug.nl/research/gradschool-science-and-engineering/phd-programme/admission/english?lang=en; https://www.mq.edu.au/research/phd-and-research-degrees/how-to-apply)
• is strongly motivated to obtain a PhD degree.

Fixed-term contract: 48 months.

The position is offered within the RUG PhD Scholarship Programme. This programme is issued by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (OCW) within the framework of the national PhD Scholarship Programme. The double-degree/cotutelle PhD scholarship student will receive a scholarship (stipend) of € 2,181 per month (gross) from the University of Groningen for the first two years of the 4-year PhD. This amount is adjusted annually on the basis of the CBS consumer price index. PhD scholarship students are not employed by the university. PhD scholarship students therefore have different rights, obligations, and a different income than employed PhD candidates. Please consider the terms and conditions of the PhD Scholarship Programme on the following website: https://www.rug.nl/education/phd-programmes/phd-scholarship-programme/conditions-application

Macquarie University offer a Cotutelle iMQRES Scholarship, for the last two-years of the 4-year PhD. The Cotutelle scholarship comprises the equivalent of a full-fees award and stipend for the normal full-fee paying period up to 2 years. Scholarship holders will be expected to have submitted their thesis for examination by the end of that period. The scholarships will comprise a full-fees awards and a stipend paid at the current RTP stipend rate for 2020 (AUD 28,092) and indexed in future years.

Faculty of Science and Engineering

We offer 1 full scholarship for a PhD project on the fitness benefits and heritability of long-term partnerships. This is a double-degree/cotutelle position at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Live Sciences (GELIFES), Faculty of Science and Engineering, invites applications for a fully-funded, four-year scholarship PhD position in its Behavioural and Physiological Ecology group. This is a double-degree with the Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University.

University of Groningen (RUG)
Founded in 1614, the University of Groningen enjoys an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative center of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Flexible study programme and academic career opportunities in a wide variety of disciplines encourage the 32,000 students and researchers alike to develop their own individual talents. Quality has been our top priority for over four hundred years, and with success: the University is currently in or around the top 100 on several influential ranking lists.

GELIFES, Faculty of Science and Engineering, RUG
The Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES), one of the larger institutes of the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), fills a special niche in the life sciences by covering and integrating mechanistic, evolutionary and ecological approaches, aiming to understand adaptation on all levels of biological organization. Researchers pursue fundamental questions while collaborating with partners from nature conservation, industry, medicine and other realms of society. Our research fields include ecology, conservation biology, evolutionary biology, behavioral biology, chronobiology, genetics and genomics, neurobiology, physiology and theoretical modelling, using a wide array of research tools.

Macquarie University (MQ)
Sydney is a vibrant global power city rated in the world’s top-ten for economy, research and development, cultural interaction, live-ability, environment, and accessibility. Macquarie University is a major research-based institution situated in the heart of Sydney’s high technology precinct. It is considered one of Australia’s best universities and is rated among the top 1% of universities globally. Macquarie is a University engaged with the real and often complex problems and opportunities that define our lives. Since our foundation 54 years ago, we have aspired to be a different type of University. Over the years, we’ve grown to become the centre of a vibrant local and global community.

Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, MQ
The Department of Biological Sciences is a vibrant community of teachers, researchers, professional staff and students working across a wide range of disciplines including animal behaviour, climate change, conservation, ecology, evolution, genetics and genomics, paleobiology and physiology. The department’s commitment to research-led teaching ensures our students graduate with a broad base in contemporary biological thought, a passion for life-long learning and strong foundations for a career in the biological sciences and related areas.