I am looking for two highly motivated students at the PhD or MSc level who can strengthen the Cottenie research group at the University of Guelph with their enthusiasm, expertise, willingness to approach complex problems, and fun field work. In my lab, we focus on the the study of metacommunity dynamics, or how interaction between local and environmental processes structure ecological communities.
One position is for a quantitative/modelling project. The main focus of this project is to answer novel questions with new statistical tools using existing data sets. The starting point of this project is to extend some of my work (Cottenie 2005, Ecology Letters 8:1175-1182), but the end point is only limited by your imagination and time. The second position is for a experimental/observational project. The student would work on the subarctic rock bluff pools in Churchill, Manitoba. They provide the perfect hierarchical metacommunity consisting of pools within several groups of rock bluffs, positioned along the coast. In additition, due to their size, quantity, and low species richness they are easy to manipulate experimentally. The Department of Integrative Biology has one of the fastest growing ecology departments of Canada. We hired 8 new ecology/evolutionary ecologists in the last 3 three years, and within the University of Guelph there is a group of 50 ecologists and approximately 100 graduate students. We recently moved into a new building with a very different design and interaction philosophy compared to any other department. Two or three faculty members share lab space with each other, in order to foster social and scientific interactions between different groups. Together with the McCann and Klironomos research groups, we form the Community Ecology Lab. This exposes our students to a very wide range of research approaches, philosophies, systems and ideas that will help them to develop into a more complete scientist. For more information, see - http://www.uoguelph.ca/ib/faculty/faculty_cottenie.shtml - http://www.uoguelph.ca/ib/ - http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Eecology/ - or send me an email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Karl Cottenie Department of Integrative Biology University of Guelph N1G 2W1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 519 824 4120, ext. 52554
