Graduate Student Research Assistantships in Aquatic Ecology The Resetarits Lab (http://www.olemiss.edu/resetaritslab/) at The University of Mississippi currently has and opening for highly qualified MS or PhD. student as a Doherty Research Assistant in Freshwater Biology. These are newly established, competitive, 12 month Research Assistantships in the Department of Biology, providing 5 years of support. Current stipend is 22 (MS)- 25k (PhD.)/year, with health insurance, and full tuition remission. Recipients are expected to design and implement independent dissertation projects (empirical and/or theoretical) at the interface between community, behavioral, and evolutionary ecology in freshwater systems, or at the freshwater/terrestrial interface, as well as participate in ongoing projects. Current studies in the Lab address a variety of questions, including the role of habitat selection in the assembly of communities and the dynamics of metacommunities, the role of diversity and species interactions in community assembly/ecosystem function, life history evolution in amphibians and insects, and biochemical, behavioral, evolution and community dynamics of chemical camouflage. Study organisms include amphibians, aquatic insects, other aquatic invertebrates, and fish, while focal habitats range from small ephemeral ponds to headwater mountain streams. Funding for past and ongoing research has come primarily from the National Science Foundation, along with EPA/NASA.
Profile and Recent/representative papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Zpeb-woAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&cstart=0&pagesize=20 Resetarits, W. J. Jr. & A. Silberbush. 2016. Local contagion and regional compression: habitat selection drives spatially explicit, multi-scale dynamics of colonization in experimental metacommunities. Ecology Letters 19:191-200. Resetarits, W. J. Jr. and C. A. Binckley. 2013. Patch quality and context, but not patch number, drive multi-scale colonization dynamics in experimental aquatic landscapes. Oecologia 173:933-946. pdf *Resetarits, W. J. Jr. and C. A. Binckley. 2013. Is the Pirate really a Ghost? Evidence for generalized chemical camouflage in an aquatic predator, Pirate Perch (Aphredoderus sayanus). American Naturalist 181:690-699. *Featured in a variety of media, including: New Scientist, Nature Research Briefs, Inside Science, Scientific American, and Wikinews. pdf Resetarits, W. J., Jr. and C. A. Binckley. 2009. Spatial contagion of predation risk affects colonization rate and community structure in experimental landscapes. Ecology 90:869-876. pdf Resetarits, W. J., Jr. and D. R. Chalcraft. 2007. Functional diversity within a morphologically conservative genus of predators: implications for functional equivalence and redundancy in ecological communities. Functional Ecology 21:793-804.*Selected for 100 Influential Papers Published in 100 Years of British Ecological Society Journals. pdf Resetarits, W. J., Jr. 2005. Habitat selection links local and regional scales in aquatic systems. Ecology Letters 8:480-486. pdf The Resetarits Lab is based in the Department of Biology and housed primarily at the University of Mississippi Field Station (UMFS), approximately 11 miles from the main campus in Oxford. The Lab has outstanding space and facilities and access to over 200 experimental ponds and wetlands at the UMFS (check us out on Google maps https://www.google.com/maps/@34.425776,-89.3935815,15.02z), hundreds of mesocosms of various sizes for experimental work, and dedicated field vehicles. The Department of Biology at The University of Mississippi has an organismal focus, including a dynamic and growing group of ecologists and evolutionary biologists (http://biology.olemiss.edu/). The University of Mississippi is dedicated to fostering diversity at all levels within the University community (http://50years.olemiss.edu/ ). Oxford is a small, dynamic, progressive community with excellent cultural amenities, great food, a fun atmosphere, and a reasonable cost of living. The University of Mississippi campus is one of the most beautiful in the country. For more information contact me at the address below. To begin the application procedure, please attach a letter of interest, unofficial transcripts and GRE scores, and resume (including contact information for 3 references) to Dr. William Resetarits ([email protected]).
