Post-doctoral Research Associate: Role of Hybridization in Adaptive Evolution in Plants
An NSF-funded postdoc in the area of experimental evolution is available to start in fall 2016 or spring 2017. The postdoctoral associate will collaborate closely with the Whitney Lab (University of New Mexico) and the Rieseberg Lab (University of British Columbia) and will be based at UNM, with fieldwork in Texas. Initial funding will be one year, with renewal for a second year following satisfactory performance. The associate will have a unique opportunity to capitalize on a long-term field experiment examining whether hybridization increases rates of adaptation, and the degree to which evolution in hybrids is repeatable. The focus is on a set of control and hybrid field populations of wild sunflowers established in 2003. Responsibilities will center on planting and supervising data collection on a large set of field common gardens during the summers of 2017 and 2018; the aim is to assess fitness and trait evolution across 15 generations of the hybrid versus control lineages. The associate will also contribute to tests of microevolutionary hypotheses focusing on changes in quantitative trait locus (QTL) allele frequencies in the hybrid lineages across the generations. There will be opportunity for the associate to develop independent projects related to the main questions. The ideal candidate will have Ph.D. in evolutionary biology, evolutionary ecology or a related field; will have excellent writing and communication skills; and will have experience in several of the following areas: -Field work with plants and their associated herbivores, pathogens, and pollinators -Measurements of natural selection -Statistical genetics, bioinformatics -Basic molecular biology techniques (e.g. DNA extraction To indicate interest: please send a short letter of interest (including ideal start date), PDFs of 1-2 relevant manuscripts, and a CV to Ken Whitney <[email protected]>.
