What, if anything, is a species in cichlid fish? Species Delimitation in East African Cichlid Fish Adaptive Radiations
We are looking for a highly motivated Ph.D. student for a fully funded Ph.D. position to work in the Evolutionary Biology Group of Axel Meyer at the University of Konstanz. Funding will be provided primarily through a German Science Foundation (DFG) grant as part of the special program “Taxon-Omics: New Approaches for Discovering and Naming Biodiversity”. The project focuses on empirical and conceptual issues regarding species delimitation and hybridization in East African Rift Lake cichlid fish adaptive radiations, and the research will center around the use of whole genome level data to resolve species boundaries in rapidly diversifying lineages of hundreds of cichlid species that are endemic to Lakes Victoria, Malawi and Tanganyika.
The funding period would be for three years with the potential for extension. Talented and highly motivated candidates are sought that have a background in systematics, bioinformatics, and/or comparative genomics. Strong expertise in wet-bench molecular techniques, high throughput sequencing analyses, and/or knowledge of one or more programming languages (such as Python, Perl, or R) would be considered highly advantageous.
The Evolutionary Biology group in Konstanz is composed of >20 postdocs and graduate students. The collaborative research environment in the lab is highly integrative, very international, and operates fully in English. Therefore, the ability to speak German would be a plus, but is not essential. Further information on researchers and research in evolutionary biology in the Meyer lab can be obtained here: http://www.evolutionsbiologie-uni-konstanz.com/.
Konstanz is a very beautiful and pleasant place to live as it borders on the third largest lake in Central Europe and lies at the foothills of the Alps. The University of Konstanz is an equal opportunity employer and is rated as one of the best universities in Germany.
Interested candidates should apply online via the IMPRS application website. For further information about the position and the application procedure, please contact: Axel Meyer, Axel.Meyer@uni-konstanz.de
Keywords delimiting species, coalescence analyses, incomplete lineage sorting, hybridization, gene trees, species trees
Main advisor Axel Meyer, University of Konstanz