Subject: MS or PhD available in fire, endangered species, and resilience
An M.S. or Ph.D. Research Assistantship is available to study population responses of the endangered American burying beetle as part of Dirac Twidwell’s research team at the University of Nebraska. Research will be conducted in the Loess Canyons Experimental Landscape, a complex landscape consisting of approximately 300,000-acres of grassland and juniper woodlands and where a series of extreme fire events are applied annually in partnership with a cooperative landowner organization. This has resulted in a spatially complex and dynamic landscape where species are responding to sudden and rapid changes in grass-tree transitions while also coping with external stressors, such as drought. These spatiotemporal shifts provide a gradient of landscape composition, pattern and change that, when combined with long-term and large-scale American burying beetle monitoring data, will be used to determine population trends across multiple spatiotemporal scales and to quantify relative differences among populations within this ecoregion.
Qualifications: Applicants should have a B.S. or M.S. degree in ecology, natural resources, entomology, wildlife science, rangeland ecology, or related field. The successful candidate will be highly motivated, passionate about scientific inquiry, possess excellent writing and communication skills, and a strong desire to communicate research in refereed scientific journals and to stakeholders. The student will be expected to produce timely data products for stakeholder use. Field sampling in relatively remote areas and in stressful environments may be necessary.
Position details: Start date is May 2018. M.S. annual stipend is $24,120 and Ph.D. is
$25,980 with full tuition waiver and standard graduate student health benefits.
Applications: Students interested in this position should send a statement of interest with research qualifications and career goals, GRE scores, your most recent transcript (unofficial is acceptable) and a CV that includes the contact information for three references. Review of applications will begin February 5 and continue until a suitable candidate is found. Please send applications to Dirac Twidwell (dirac.twidwell@unl.edu).