Graduate student assistantships (1-2): The Division of Forestry and Natural Resources at West Virginia University is searching for 1-2 graduate students for a funded project to develop and implement acoustic, telemetry, genetic and toxicological studies of King and Clapper Rails in eastern Virginia. Masters or PhD students may be considered in any of these fields of study and the selection process will rely on finding students with a skill set that matches well with other team members. A basic description of the project is below; interested students with experience in at least one of these fields should send a cover letter, cv, unofficial transcripts, GRE scores, and the names of three references to the three following faculty:
Dr. James Anderson, jim.ander...@mail.wvu.edu Dr. Todd Katzner, todd.katz...@mail.wvu.edu Dr. Amy Welsh, amy.we...@mail.wvu.edu Distribution, differentiation and hybridization of king and clapper rails in eastern Virginia. King Rails and Clapper Rails are in the Virginia Wildlife Action Plan and can be sympatric in areas of intermediate salinity in eastern Virginia. However, surveying for these species is challenging, as their calls are similar, they overlap in distribution, and because they can hybridize. Addressing conservation efforts toward the higher-priority king rail requires reliable information on its status, distribution, abundance and habitat use. This in turn requires a methodology to reliably identify the species in the field or through post-field analysis of the data collected. The overarching goal of this project is to develop and implement a mechanism to survey for, identify and estimate distribution and abundance of allopatric and sympatric breeding populations of king, clapper and hybrid rails in Virginia. This project will address the problem of distinguishing between king and clapper rails by ear by drawing on links between acoustic monitoring, genetics, morphology and ecology. Rails will be captured in the field and genetic, morphometric and toxicology samples will be taken from all rails captured. Captured rails will also be used as a foundation for telemetry and acoustic monitoring studies. The specific goals of our project are to: * Identify the distribution and abundance of king-clappers complex of species and hybrids. * Characterize habitat associations at multiple spatial scales of each of these species and their hybrids. * Develop acoustic and morphological mechanisms to identify king, clapper and hybrid rails. * Evaluate genetic distinctness of each species and their hybrids. * Evaluate contaminant loads (mercury and lead especially) and correlates of contaminant loads in rails in Virginia. Position is open until filled. The tentative starting date is August 2014. Students receive health insurance, tuition waiver and an annual assistantship (M.S. students ($16,536) Ph.D. students ($19,848)).
