*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]>.
------------------------------------------
Ken Whitney
/Associate Professor/
/Department of Biology/
/University of New Mexico/
/Albuquerque, NM 87131/
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://biology.unm.edu/whitney/
