Western Melanesia-including New Guinea-sits at the crossroads of Asia and Australia and is one of the most interesting, puzzling, and understudied hyper diverse regions on Earth. Clarifying how tectonic movements have sundered or joined different Melanesian landforms in the past several million years is key to understanding the origins of this biotic diversity. The Postdoctoral Research Associate will be a major participant in helping to investigate how the diversity and evolutionary history of the five major geological landforms that comprise most of western Melanesia have impacted evolution of that region's biota and to identify those ancient insular landmasses critical in generating the lineages that colonised and radiated across New Guinea, Australia, and/or insular Asia. The project will investigate evolutionary relationships among the region's reptiles and amphibians to address these questions. The research will help to replace the outdated, unidirectional "out-of-New-Guinea" model for origins of Pacific biodiversity with a more dynamic and nuanced understanding that ancient, yet under-appreciated, land areas in Melanesia have long been important in shaping biotic evolution in the broader region. The project will use a combination of traditional sequencing methods alongside sequencing of ultra-conserved elements (or similar) from fresh and historic museum samples (aka archival DNA) and analyse these data with respect to new geological models to be generated by a project partner.
We are seeking to appoint a postdoctoral research associate to study the Origins of Western Melanesian Herpetological Diversity on a 36-month, fixed-term contract. This project is funded by a joint NERC-NSF grant to Dr Simon Maddock (University of Wolverhampton, UK) and Dr Fred Kraus (University of Michigan, USA). The position will be based in the School of Sciences at the University of Wolverhampton, UK; with some time spent in the USA and Papua New Guinea. The successful applicant will possess the skills and knowledge to contribute to research, dissemination, and knowledge exchange as part of the project.
You will have completed a PhD in biological sciences or an equivalent subject, have experience of laboratory and phylogenetic methods, and have disseminated research in international scientific journals and conferences. During your tenure, you will be responsible for collecting tissue samples in Papua New Guinea (particularly on Bougainville, Solomon Island Archipelago), generating sequence data (Sanger and sequence capture), analysing data, disseminating research, and co-supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students. Good communication and organisational skills are essential attributes.
For more details and to apply please see https://jobs.wlv.ac.uk/vacancy/postdoctoral-research-associate-in-origins-of-western-melanesian-diversity-496367.html
We are seeking to appoint a research assistant to help study the Origins of Western Melanesian Diversity on a 24-month, fixed-term contract. This project is funded by a joint NERC-NSF grant to Dr Simon Maddock (University of Wolverhampton, UK) and Dr Fred Kraus (University of Michigan, USA). The position will be based in the School of Sciences at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. You will possess the skills and knowledge to generate high-quality molecular sequence data.
You will have completed an MSc in biological sciences or an equivalent subject and have experience of molecular and phylogenetic methods. You will be responsible for generating sequence data (Sanger and sequence capture), analysing data, co-supervising lab work by undergraduate and postgraduate students, and, if interested, disseminating research. Good communication and organisational skills are essential attributes.
For more details and to apply please see https://jobs.wlv.ac.uk/vacancy/research-assistant-in-herpetological-genomics-496360.html
For an informal discussion about the positions, please contact Simon Maddock (s.maddock@wlv.ac.uk).
