PhD Studentship: Using the Population Structure of Seabirds to Predict Demography

3 Year, full-time PhD studentship

Eligibility: Home UK/EU and International applicants

Bursary p.a: Bursary equivalent to UKRI national minimum stipend plus fees (current 2022/23 bursary rate is £17,668)

University fees and bench fees: University fees and bench fees will be met by the University for the 3 years of the funded Studentship. Visa and associated costs are not funded. International applicants can visit https://www.brookes.ac.uk/students/isat/ for further information.

Interviews: Provisionally 13, 14 March 2023

Start date:  September 2023

Project Title: Using the population structure of seabirds to predict demography

Director of Studies: Dr Andrew Lack

Supervisors: Dr Tom Hart; Dr Peter Long

Requirements:

Applicants should have a first or upper second-class honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in the UK or acceptable equivalent qualification. Non-UK Applicants must have a valid IELTS Academic test certificate (or equivalent) with an overall minimum score of 7.0 and no score below 6.0 issued in the last 2 years by an approved test centre. 

There is an additional requirement to undertake up to 6 hours undergraduate teaching/week during semesters and to participate in a teaching skills course without further remuneration.

Project Description:

Globally, seabirds are threatened by human disturbance, fishing, climate change and pollution, culminating in a two -third reduction of monitored populations worldwide. However, monitored populations are rarely remote and likely bias our understanding of seabird populations. What about unmonitored populations? How about detecting population stress prior to observed decline? We hypothesise a structural component to changes in population size, reflected in the density and microhabitat use of a colony. We also believe that we can use microhabitat and colony structure to determine in a snapshot whether populations are declining, stable or increasing. We need a PhD student to investigate how colony structure and colony counts can be used to predict past, present and future influences on seabirds in remote, polar environments and remoter parts of the UK and Europe. The studentship would suit someone interested in remote monitoring, marine conservation and applied policy moving forward.

Fieldwork is not required, but we strongly encourage it, dependent on the successful applicant passing fieldwork training requirements and medical screening. There is a strong reliance on coding skills, but this means different things to different people, so we encourage interested candidates to contact us with a CV.

Aims:

• Determine how colony structure links to population change.
• Investigate microhabitat influence on reproductive success.

Skills required:

• Competency in coding (R/Python) and statistics, with a high degree of problem solving

(essential, but we will provide training in this)

• Good people skills (essential for fieldwork, we can’t train you in this)
• Drone flying (essential, but we will train you if needed)
• GIS (basic)
• Ecology background (desirable)

Contact: peter.long@brookes.ac.uk

Advertised competitively alongside our current PhD studentship advertisements for Biological and Medical Sciences

How to apply: Applicants should visit the project webpage https://www.brookes.ac.uk/courses/research/population-structure-of-seabirds

to download instructions on how to submit an online application.

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