Ph.D. student in the field of Avian Behavioral Ecology, Belgium

The University of Antwerp is a knowledge centre with 3.600 co-workers that performs ground-breaking and innovative research of international standing. The university takes special care to ensure optimum support and supervision of students, and pays constant attention to educational innovation. The university is an autonomous pluralistic institution that is committed to the enhancement of an open, democratic and multicultural society, and it pursues an equal opportunities policy.
The university is seeking to fill the following vacancy (m/f) at the Department Biology-Ethology of the Faculty of Sciences:
Ph.D. student in the field of Avian Behavioral Ecology
Job description: The Ph.D. student will join a group of researchers working on all four major aspects of animal behaviour: causation, development, function and evolution. Recent work of the Ethology group (Head: Prof. Dr. Marcel Eens) is focusing on (1) the function and evolution of bird song with particular attention to costs and constraints that limit the expression of song; (2) the relationships between hormones, behaviour and life histories, including (hormone-mediated) maternal effects The project aims to study the functional and evolutionaryconsequences of hormone-mediated mat ernal effects in birds. Maternal effects are thought to have evolved to signal environmental conditions to the offspring (”weather-forecasting”), preparing the offspring for the post-hatching environment. The proximate effects of maternally derived hormones on offspring development have already been studied in great detail, but most of the studies have focused on branding the effects as positive or negative to the offspring. However, this view ignores that changes in offspring development may also provide costs to parents,e.g. via changes in the food demand. Furthermore, (hormone-mediated) maternal effects have the potential to generate crucial evolutionary trade-offs: “what’s best for the parents may not be best for an individual offspring”. Maternal yolk hormones may therefore not only serve as benign “weather-forecasters”, signalling environmental conditions, but enable female birds to manipulate offspring in their interest. We therefore want to know how the effects of maternally derived steroid hormones on offspring development impinge on maternal/parental fitness, and whether maternal yolk hormones serve the evolutionary interests of offspring or mother/father.
Profile and requirements: * You hold a MSc degree in Biology or related fields * You have experience with animal research * You are interested in behavioural ecology and/or endocrinology
We offer: * An initial 1-year contract, extendable up to 4 years afterpositive evaluation * The position should yield a Ph.D. degree of theUniversity of Antwerp * A dynamic research environment with significantfreedom in developing your own research interests * The position can betaken up from November 2009, preferably before February 2010
Interested? Please send all application material including 1) yourcurriculum vitae 2) a brief (250 words) summary of your motivation and3) a letter of reference as single PDF-file to wendt.muller@ua.ac.be.
Closing date: 30.09.09. Further information can be obtained from:Dr. Wendt Müller, wendt.muller@ua.ac.be, phone +32 32652292, http://www.ua.ac.be/wendt.muller
Wendt Müller University of Antwerp Department of Biology-Ethology CampusDrie Eiken C-127 Universiteitsplein 1 2610 Antwerp (Wilrijk), Belgium
e-mail: Wendt.Muller@ua.ac.beweb: http://www.ua.ac.be/wendt.muller