Overview
Are you fascinated by animal migration? Do you want to understand how it is changing as we change the world around us? Do you want to do so using cutting-edge molecular and biologging techniques?
About this opportunity
Join the Avian Ecology Group at the University of Liverpool and participate in impactful research that brings together fieldwork in remote locations, state-of-the-art biologging, lab-based investigation and high-performance computing to investigate how cultural and genetic inheritance informs long-distance seabird migration.
The project: Cultural inheritance – the transmission of behaviour from more experienced to less experienced individuals – has the capacity to allow long-lived animals to rapidly change their behaviour in response to a changing environment. Whilst this might allow migratory birds to change destinations as humans change the environment, there is substantial evidence that at least some migratory species information is inherited genetically. Since genetic evolution is far slower than cultural evolution, it is therefore of substantial interest to determine what the relative contributions of these two information sources actually is.
This project will focus on the lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus), and specifically on populations breeding around Baltic and North seas. We will track birds and sequence from different subspecies to see if the a) genetic makeup of individuals and b) the migratory movements of the colonies they come from has any effect on migratory behaviour. This will be in collaboration with Birdlife Sweden and Birdlife Norway, with the opportunity to also be involved with tracking efforts on Caspian tern, arctic tern, arctic skua, little gull and many more seabirds.
Who are we looking for? The successful candidate will be fully supported with existing data and an investigation framework, but will have the freedom to explore the topic, make the project their own and plan their own investigations.
Who are we? The supervision team will comprise of Dr Joe Wynn (University of Liverpool), Dr Jonathan Green (University of Liverpool), Prof. Miriam Liedvogel (Institute for Avian Research) and Prof. Susanne Åkesson (Lund University). Between us we have 30+ years of supervision experience, with backgrounds ranging from genetic adaptations to a changing environment all the way to policy applications and applied science. In addition to the main research team there will also be the opportunity to collaborate with and visit collaborating researchers from across Europe and in doing so participate in wide-ranging field and lab-based research.