PhD position: Adaptive social flexibility – a powerful mechanism to cope with a

The Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES) offers a 4-year NWO-funded PhD position for a project on “Adaptive social flexibility – a powerful mechanism to cope with a rapidly changing world”, with the Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) as a model system.

The project is coordinated by Prof. Jan Komdeur (see: https://research.rug.nl/en/persons/jan-komdeur), in collaboration with Prof. Martijn Egas (https://research.rug.nl/en/persons/martijn-egas)and Prof. Hannah L. Dugdale (University of Groningen, see https://research.rug.nl/en/persons/hannah-dugdale), Prof. David S. Richardson (University of East Anglia, UK, see: https://research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/david-richardson-2) and Prof. Terry Burke (University of Sheffield, UK, see: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/biosciences/people/academic-staff/terry-burke). The student will join a lively and highly international team of post-doctoral researchers, PhD and master students working on the evolution of social behaviours and life history patterns in social animals, supported by laboratory technicians.

Especially now, in this era of rapid climate change, organisms need to adapt to reduced and unpredictable food availability. We argue that such adaptive flexibility may be facilitated by sociality, whereby animals form groups and cooperate on tasks that affect survival and reproduction (cf cooperative breeding). This project will investigate whether ‘social flexibility’, i.e. the capacity of individuals to flexibly change from solitary breeding to cooperative breeding and vice versa throughout their lifetime, is a fast and potent adaptation mechanism that provides fitness benefits to individuals and buffers populations against decline and extinction in times of environmental deterioration. We will identify when and how environmental change elicits changes in social life and how this in turn affects the capacity to cope with environmental variation and change, which has not been tested.

Our long-term study of the facultatively cooperative Seychelles warblers (SW) on Cousin Island, Seychelles, provides a uniquely suitable natural system in which to investigate this question. SWs can breed as solitary dominant pairs, but can also form breeding groups with subordinates that may or may not breed cooperatively. Hence, the SW system is a rare instance where we can study the causes and consequences of social behaviour at the individual and group levels simultaneously. They inhabit an environment where food availability – which shows considerable spatio-temporal variation – has become more erratic and unpredictable over the last couple of decades, apparently linked to changing local and global climatic conditions. Using >38 years of data our project will investigate the impact of food availability on life histories. We hypothesise that observed adjustments in social behaviour are strategic and enhance individual fitness, and consequently improve group persistence. Our project comprises three integrated and complementary work packages: First, we will investigate whether individuals react to environmental change (change in food availability and fluctuations) by forming groups and cooperating with each other. Second, we will test if this cooperation facilitates adaptation to extreme and unpredictable change (long-term dataset, experiments and three seasons of fieldwork on SWs). Then, we will use demographic models – tailored to SWs, but applicable to other species - to investigate the long-term implications of rapid environmental change on the population dynamics of social species.

Organisation
Founded in 1614, the University of Groningen enjoys an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative institution of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Flexible study programmes and academic career opportunities in a wide variety of disciplines encourage the 34,000 students and researchers alike to develop their own individual talents. As one of the best research universities in Europe, the University of Groningen has joined forces with other top universities and networks worldwide to become a truly global centre of knowledge.

We are looking for an enthusiastic and talented PhD candidate with a Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Biology with a strong interest in evolutionary and theoretical biology. The ideal candidate has experience with fieldwork on birds (mist-netting, colour-ring reading, behavioural observations), theoretical research, analyses of long-term data (extracting data and statistical analyses) and has written at least one scientific publication. We also ask for excellent communication and writing skills in English. Other helpful competences include advanced statistical proficiency (ideally in the R software environment) and teamwork ability.

The preferred starting date is between June and July 2025. We offer you in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities:

- A salary of € 2,901 gross per month in the first year, up to € 3,707 gross per month in the final second year, based on a full-time position.
- A full-time position (1.0 FTE) for 48 months (4 years). The successful candidate will first be offered a temporary position of one year with the option of renewal for another 3 years.
- Prolongation of the contract is contingent on sufficient progress in the first year to indicate that a successful completion of the PhD thesis within the next 3 years is to be expected.
- A PhD training programme is part of the agreement and the successful candidate will be enrolled in the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen.

Prof. dr. Jan Komdeur
+31 50-363 2056
j.komdeur@rug.nl

GELIFES

The application should include:

- A letter of motivation to apply for this position.
- A curriculum vitae.
- A one-page statement of research interests highlighting how you meet the qualification requirements, for instance description of previous research experience, such as bachelor/master research projects.
- Contact details of two professional references.
- Transcripts from your bachelor’s and master’s degree.

You may apply for this position until 20 April 11:59pm / before 21 April 2025 Dutch local time (CEST) by means of the application form (click on "Apply" below on the advertisement on the university website).

The University of Groningen strives to be a university in which students and staff are respected and feel at home, regardless of differences in background, experiences, perspectives, and identities. We believe that working on our core values of inclusion and equality are a joint responsibility and we are constructively working on creating a socially safe environment. Diversity among students and staff members enriches academic debate and contributes to the quality of our teaching and research. We therefore invite applicants from underrepresented groups in particular to apply. For more information, see also our diversity policy webpage: https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/policy-and-strategy/diversity-and-inclusion/

Our selection procedure follows the guidelines of the Recruitment code (NVP): https://www.nvp-hrnetwerk.nl/nl/sollicitatiecode and European Commission's European Code of Conduct for recruitment of researchers: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/charter/code

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