Georgetown University Biology Graduate Student Applicants Wanted Professor Janet Mann https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014RY0bAAG/janet-mann (GU) and Dr. Céline Frère https://www.celinefrerelab.com/ (USC) are seeking graduate student (PhD) applicants to Georgetown University to work on a study of maternal effects in wild bottlenose dolphins, funded by the National Science Foundation. Competitive applicants should have a strong quantitative and theoretical background in genetics and behavioral ecology. Refer to https://biology.georgetown.edu/graduate/applicants for details. Email Janet Mann man...@georgetown.edu for additional information. *Deadline is December 1*.
General Project Description: While several studies link sociality to fitness in long-lived mammals, maternal influence on inter- and intra-individual variation in sociality (e.g. dynamic social patterns) and fitness outcomes is relatively unexplored. Recent computational advances allow this project to incorporate multi-level, dynamic variation to advance understanding of how sociality evolved, i.e., transmission pathways. This study system, a 35-year longitudinal study of wild bottlenose dolphins, provides a unique opportunity to address these questions because of species characteristics, and the size, detail, and long-term nature of the dataset. This project will use: (1) novel quantitative genetics methodologies to unravel the importance of maternal effects on social behavior while accounting for both additive genetic variation and the mothers’ social environment; (2) next-generation sequencing combined with demographic data to construct accurate pedigree information from high- density single nucleotide polymorphisms; (3) dynamic social network modeling (social association/interaction matrices) to account for changing social attributes of individuals rather than just static traits. As such, this study will be a comprehensive exploration of how maternal effects impact social traits over the lifespan and across more than one generation within an evolutionary framework. In addition, this is the first study to do so in wild long-lived mammal with extensive maternal social transmission, while accounting for additive genetic variation. The results will provide significant advances by extending our study of the genetic and non-genetic mechanisms of inheritance, which play critical roles in evolution and responses to environmental change.
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