An opportunity exists at the University of Dayton (UD) for graduate-level training related to questions at the interface of community and ecosystem ecology utilizing insect communities. The student will be based at UD (although, there may be a substantial field component in grasslands in Texas) and will work in the laboratory of Dr. Chelse Prather, a new faculty member at UD starting in August of 2016.
I am seeking a motivated student who is eager to perform the arduous tasks associated with ecology field research and chemical analyses in the lab, the careful work of experimentation, and who has an eagerness to learn and implement complex statistical analyses. Potential students must be excited to work with insects and have substantial fieldwork experience. Students must be able to work well in potentially inclement conditions (e.g., hot summers with many biting insects), and work well with others in the field. Other desirable qualities include: familiarity with sampling grassland vegetation and insects, insect identification, rearing insects, laboratory feeding trials with insects, and laboratory chemical analyses. I would be open to applications from potential Masters or PhD level students. I am currently working on two major projects in my lab: 1) an NSF-funded large-scale manipulation to determine the role of micronutrients in structuring herbivore communities in grasslands <http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1457114>, and 2) a mesocosm experiment (in collaboration with Dr. Angela Laws and others) to determine if herbivore diversity affects grassland functioning. These projects are both located in Texas, and could provide an excellent framework for an intellectually curious student to develop independent, interesting complementary projects. The student will be initially supported by a teaching assistantship through the Department of Biology at UD. The assistantship is associated with a stipend of ~$20,000/year; however, a portion of this comes in the form of a University summer fellowship which is awarded through a competitive process. The assistantship also comes with 100% tuition remission. Support is guaranteed for the life of the project pending satisfactory performance. UD is the largest private University in the state of Ohio, and is consistently award winning for both academic programs and scholarship http://www.udayton.edu/awards_and_rankings.php. Enrollment is ~11,000 with approximately 3,000 graduate students. Interested individuals are encouraged to view the following web sites: Dr. Prather’s Lab Pages: https://chelseprather.wordpress.com UD Department of Biology: http://biology.udayton.edu University of Dayton: http://www.udayton.edu University of Houston’s Coastal Center (where field work is located): http://www.eih.uh.edu To being the application process (or if you have any questions), please send a CV, GPA, GRE scores and any PDF reprints to: [email protected] <[email protected]>. *I realize this is a last minute call, but I recently accepted this position, and I would like to move quickly on finding applicants as I have some projects that would be very ammenable for graduate student research . I will be accepting applicants for the next few weeks, and hope to identify students that are a good fit for my lab very soon.* -- Dr. Chelse Prather Prather lab website <https://chelseprather.wordpress.com>
