Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA)/Ph.D. student position , University of Oklahoma

Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA)/Ph.D. student position available: A Ph.D. student position is available in my laboratory to work on a new 3-year NSF-funded project entitled, ¡§Organism-environment interactions ¡V impact of cultural eutrophication on Daphnia tracked by genomics, physiology, and resurrection ecology¡¨.

In a planned 36-month project in collaboration with colleagues at Oklahoma State University and Indiana University, the PIs will use an integrated approach involving genetic/genomic, physiological, and ¡§resurrection ecology¡¨ methods to examine how cultural eutrophication (i.e., enrichment of freshwater systems with nutrients such as phosphorus) influences evolutionary changes in organisms. The waterflea, Daphnia pulex, which plays a major role in freshwater food webs (i.e. it eats algae/bacteria and in turn is fed upon by fish), will serve as the model organism. Daphnia are ideal for such studies because they produce resting eggs that can lay dormant in lake sediments for long periods of time. Decades-old eggs can be induced to hatch (i.e. ¡§resurrection ecology¡¨) and viable DNA can be extracted from eggs that are centuries old. Moreover, the D. pulex genome has been sequenced and genetic/genomic methods (i.e. gene expression) are in place to study how changes in eutrophication (phosphorus-level) patterns over the past century have influenced how an organism like a daphniid can respond to ecosystem/environmental change. Results from this cross-disciplinary study will provide an excellent example of how man-made environmental changes (via eutrophication) influence natural (freshwater) ecosystems.

For more details and information, please contact:

Dr. Lawrence J. Weider, Professor of Zoology

Director, The University of Oklahoma Biological Station (UOBS)

University of Oklahoma

Norman, OK 73019

Phone: 1-405-325-4766 or 325-7438

FAX: 1-405-325-0835

ljweider@ou.edu

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