We are looking for a student who wishes to design their own PhD research project researching inbreeding effects on senescence and physiological mechanisms of senescence. You will be supervised by Hannah Dugdale (RUG; https://hannahdugdale.wordpress.com), Simon Griffith (MQ; https://griffithecology.com), and David S Richardson (University of East Anglia, UK, https://people.uea.ac.uk/david_richardson).

This is a double degree at RUG and MQ. For the first two-years you will be based at RUG and embedded in the Seychelles Warbler Project (http://seychelles-warbler-project.group.shef.ac.uk). You will conduct fieldwork in the Seychelles for a minimum of two seasons (up to 3 months per season), with a COVID-19 contingency plan. For the second two-years you will be based in Australia on the MQ campus. You will be part of a team of PhD students, post-docs, and staff who are using long-term individual-based datasets of natural and captive populations to improve understanding of life-history evolution.

As a PhD scholarship student, you will develop your own research project in consultation with the associated supervisors. You will conduct independent and original scientific research, report results via peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and ultimately a PhD thesis. The PhD thesis has to be completed within four years. Being part of a cutting-edge research programme, you will receive training in the form of hands-on instruction, advanced courses, summer/winter schools, as well as complementary workshops on generic research and transferable skills. Special attention is paid to training activities directed towards your future (academic or non-academic) career after the PhD trajectory, in the context of the RUG’s Career Perspective Series, and the Research Training Certification Program at MQ.

Project
One of the most profound challenges we all face is our deterioration with age - a process known as senescence. Individuals clearly senesce differently, in both the age they start to deteriorate and the rate of their decline. However, the underlying causes of these differences in senescence patterns remain poorly understood. Inbreeding increases the proportion of the genome that is identical by descent, reducing genetic heterozygosity and increasing the expression of deleterious recessive alleles, thus reducing fitness. Genomic markers provide power to estimate heterozygosity and test the prediction that inbreeding depression increases with age. Additionally, improved understanding of the cellular physiology of senescence will highlight potential mechanisms of senescence. This will help clarify why some individuals are less able to buffer against senescence, perhaps, for example, due to their genetic makeup or mitochondrial performance.

You will design your project to investigate inbreeding effects on senescence, and physiological senescence. In the Netherlands, you will have the long-term Seychelles warbler dataset available to address this question. Seychelles warblers are cooperative breeders and we have detailed life-history data of over 2,000 birds, spanning more than 30 years. High variance in both senescence and inbreeding occurs in the population. Over 450 birds in our dataset are inbred, and inbreeding effects accumulate over life and impact strongly on survival. Potential research questions are how genome-wide heterozygosity affects senescence, and whether heterozygosity fitness correlations arise due to locus specific or genome-wide effects. In Australia, you will work on the cellular physiology of senescence using a captive population of long-tailed finches. In this captive population we have a good pedigree with known demography and use approaches to measure mitochondrial performance non-invasively. This component will provide insight into potential underlying mechanisms of organismal senescence. The overall project will improve our understanding of how and why some individuals live longer, healthier lives, and provide important insights into ways of mitigating senescence.

References
Bebbington K, Spurgin LG, Fairfield EA, Dugdale HL, Komdeur J, Burke T, Richardson DS (2016) Telomere length reveals cumulative individual and transgenerational inbreeding effects in a passerine bird. Molecular Ecology, 25, 2949–2960.

Hammers M, Kingma SA, Bebbington K, van de Crommenacker J, Spurgin LG, Richardson DS, Burke TA, Dugdale HL, Komdeur J (2015) Senescence in the wild: Insights from a long-term study on Seychelles warblers. Experimental Gerontology, 71, 69–79.

Hooper DM, Griffith SC, Price TD (2019) Sex chromosome inversions enforce reproductive isolation across an avian hybrid zone. Molecular Ecology, 28, 1246-1262.

Ton R, Stier A, Cooper CE, Griffith SC (2021) Effects of heat waves during post-natal development on mitochondrial and whole body physiology: an experimental study in zebra finches. Frontiers in Physiology, 12, 661670. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2021.661670.

We are looking for a candidate who:

• holds a (research) master degree (or will graduate before appointment date) with distinction (see: https://www.mq.edu.au/research/phd-and-research-degrees/how-to-apply) in a relevant field, such as Evolutionary Biology
• is curiosity driven and passionate about fundamental research in the context of genomics and senescence
• has previous experience of bird ringing and conducting fieldwork in harsh environments (training will be provided)
• has laboratory skills, such as in physiological data (training will be provided)
• has strong quantitative skills in statistics and bioinformatics (training will be provided)
• has experience in extracting and analysing data from databases (e.g. Access) or large datasets (training will be provided)
• is a team player, willing to work with a diverse group of researchers and technicians, and can also work independently
• has strong communication skills and is motivated to disseminate results to both scientific peers and a broad audience
• is proficient in the English language (https://www.rug.nl/research/gradschool-science-and-engineering/phd-programme/admission/english?lang=en; https://www.mq.edu.au/research/phd-and-research-degrees/how-to-apply)
• is strongly motivated to obtain a PhD degree.

Fixed-term contract: 48 months.

The position is offered within the RUG PhD Scholarship Programme. This programme is issued by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (OCW) within the framework of the national PhD Scholarship Programme. The double-degree/cotutelle PhD scholarship student will receive a scholarship (stipend) of € 2,249 per month (gross) from the University of Groningen for the first two years of the 4-year PhD. This amount is adjusted annually on the basis of the CBS consumer price index. PhD scholarship students are not employed by the university. PhD scholarship students therefore have different rights, obligations, and a different income than employed PhD candidates. Please consider the terms and conditions of the PhD Scholarship Programme on the following website: https://www.rug.nl/education/phd-programmes/phd-scholarship-programme/conditions-application

Macquarie University offer a Cotutelle iMQRES Scholarship, for the last two-years of the 4-year PhD. The Cotutelle scholarship comprises the equivalent of a full-fees award and stipend for the normal full-fee paying period up to 2 years. Scholarship holders will be expected to have submitted their thesis for examination by the end of that period. The scholarships will comprise a full-fees awards and a stipend paid at the current RTP stipend rate for 2021 (AUD 28,597 per annum) and indexed in future years.

Faculty of Science and Engineering

We offer 1 full scholarship for a PhD project on the effect of inbreeding on senescence using long-term datasets of wild Seychelles warblers and physiological senescence in captive long-tailed finches. This is a double-degree/cotutelle position at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Organization
Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Live Sciences (GELIFES), Faculty of Science and Engineering, invites applications for a fully-funded, four-year scholarship PhD position in its Behavioural and Physiological Ecology group. This is a double-degree with the Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University.

University of Groningen (RUG)
Founded in 1614, the University of Groningen enjoys an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative center of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Flexible study programme and academic career opportunities in a wide variety of disciplines encourage the 36,000 students and researchers alike to develop their own individual talents. Quality has been our top priority for over four hundred years, and with success: the University is currently in or around the top 100 on several influential ranking lists.

GELIFES, Faculty of Science and Engineering, RUG
The Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES), one of the larger institutes of the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), fills a special niche in the life sciences by covering and integrating mechanistic, evolutionary and ecological approaches, aiming to understand adaptation on all levels of biological organization. Researchers pursue fundamental questions while collaborating with partners from nature conservation, industry, medicine and other realms of society. Our research fields include ecology, conservation biology, evolutionary biology, behavioural biology, chronobiology, genetics and genomics, neurobiology, physiology and theoretical modelling, using a wide array of research tools.

Macquarie University (MQ)
Sydney is a vibrant global power city rated in the world’s top-ten for economy, research and development, cultural interaction, live-ability, environment, and accessibility. Macquarie University is a major research-based institution situated in the heart of Sydney’s high technology precinct. It is considered one of Australia’s best universities and is rated among the top 1% of universities globally. Macquarie is a University engaged with the real and often complex problems and opportunities that define our lives. Since our foundation 54 years ago, we have aspired to be a different type of University. Over the years, we’ve grown to become the centre of a vibrant local and global community.

Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, MQ
The Department of Biological Sciences is a vibrant community of teachers, researchers, professional staff and students working across a wide range of disciplines including animal behaviour, climate change, conservation, ecology, evolution, genetics and genomics, and physiology. The department’s commitment to research-led teaching ensures our students graduate with a broad base in contemporary biological thought, a passion for life-long learning and strong foundations for a career in the biological sciences and related areas.