Interesting DPhil opportunity.... --------------------- Dear Colleagues, I would be grateful if you could pass this on to anyone you may know of with interests aligned with this project.
Regards Steve *THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF DYNAMIC SOCIALITY IN A WILD BIRD POPULATION* *DPhil (PhD) project in Evolutionary Ecology / Information Engineering, University of Oxford* Supervisors: Prof Ben Sheldon, Dr Teddy Wilkin, Prof Steve Roberts All organisms display social behaviour of some form, but the extent and duration of this behaviour varies tremendously between species and over life cycles within species: understanding what causes variation in social behaviour has been a major research theme in biology for decades. Until recently, very little of this work has focussed on the type of social organisation that typifies many animals, where social groups are highly dynamic, with frequent changes in their composition, and where associations between individuals vary in their strength and consistency. However, there is currently great interest in applying techniques from network analysis to animal social behaviour. This project exploits a large ongoing study of a wild bird population that has been a model system in ecology and evolutionary biology (the great tit *Parus major* at Wytham Woods near Oxford), in which thousands of individuals are marked with transponders, and a grid of recording locations generates hundreds of thousands of records each winter. The main aims of the project are to use these data to generate biological insight into social behaviour in birds, in a social network context. The first aim of this project will be: (1) for the student to develop methods for identifying individual groups from the complex temporally and spatially-structured data set based on feeding associations. Having done this the next aims will be to (2) explore the stability of groups over time, and (3) quantify the structure of groups in terms of the number, individual characteristics and relatedness of their constituents. Following these steps, the project will: (4) develop social networking techniques which integrate temporal changes in the strengths of relationships between individuals, and (5) determine the consequences, in terms of foraging and breeding performance, of social structure at the individual, group and population levels. Finally, (6) the project will explore how group stability changes in response to changes in the environment, including factors such as food availability. The ideal candidate for this post is a physical scientist with a first degree in engineering, computer science, physics or mathematics, a strong quantitative background, and a desire to use these skills to understand complex biological problems, but biologists with a very strong quantitative background are also encouraged to apply. The supervisors are skilled in ecology and behaviour (Sheldon and Wilkin) and information engineering (Roberts) and the project will work very much at the interface of these fields, as part of two large, research active groups, see: http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/egi/ http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~parg/ The stipend is £16,000 per annum. This studentship is open to candidates from the UK and the EU/EEA and Switzerland (i.e, to any student who would not be classed as paying fees at the international student level). Informal inquiries, accompanied with a CV, to Prof Ben Sheldon (* ben.shel...@zoo.ox.ac.uk* <ben.shel...@zoo.ox.ac.uk>). The deadline for applications is 9 November 2009, and the successful candidate would be expected to start by January 2010.
