The position will be based in the School of Biological Sciences at Flinders University. Flinders University offers a dynamic research environment that explores the continuum of environmental and evolutionary research from the ancient to modern ecology. The School of Biological Sciences is an integrated community researching and teaching biology and has a long history of science innovation.
Project Background Since 1996, Biosecurity South Australia has been running a capture-mark-recapture study on a European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus ) population located at Turretfield (~50 km north of Adelaide). Now into the 21st year, this is one of the world's longest studies of its kind. Approximately every 8 weeks, cage traps are reset and the population trapped over five days, with the captured rabbits weighed, sexed, tagged, and blood-sampled. The study was established to investigate the epidemiology and efficacy of the two imported rabbit biocontrol agents, rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) and myxomatosis. To date, from 119 formal trapping events and RHDV-outbreak carcass-sampling trips, >4500 rabbits have been monitored with >8700 cELISA RHDV antibody tests and 7500 IgG, IgM, and IgA RHDV antibody tests on sera (similarly for myxomatosis), and 111 RHDV-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analyses run on tissue samples of the sampled rabbits. This represents an unparalleled dataset on rabbit survival, population fluctuations, and disease dynamics.
Position Announcement Today we announced a HEAP of positions in our Global Ecology Lab for hot-shot, up-and-coming ecologists. If you think you've got what it takes, I encourage you to apply. The positions are all financed by the Australian Research Council from grants that Barry Brook, Phill Cassey, Damien Fordham, and I have all been awarded in the last few years. We decided to do a bulk advertisement so that we maximize the opportunity for good science talent out there.
We're looking for bright, mathematically adept people in palaeo-ecology, wildlife population modelling, disease modelling, climate change modelling, and species distribution modelling.
The positions are self-explanatory, but if you want more information, just follow the links and contacts given below. For my own selfish interests, I provide a little more detail for two of the positions for which I'm directly responsible – but please have a look at the lot.
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