Funding providers: EU
Subject areas: Animal movement, seabird behavioural ecology
Project start date:
- 1 October 2023 (Enrolment open from mid-September)
Project supervisors:
Aligned programme of study: PhD in Biological Sciences
Mode of study: Full-time
Project description:
Within an EU-funded consortium seeking to advance state-of-the-art understanding and prediction of how multiple stressors and cumulative human impacts influence marine biodiversity, we are looking for a PhD candidate to work on how ‘stressors’, such as wind farms, and ‘attractors’, such as fishery discards, affect the foraging ecology of seabirds. The successful candidate would work within the Swansea Lab for Animal Movement (SLAM), deploying smart tags (such as ‘Daily Diaries’) on breeding seabirds in the North Atlantic as well as examining movement data from birds derived from ship transect data. As part of this, the candidate would use bespoke software (DDMT) on the high frequency data acquired from bird-borne loggers to dead-reckon the movement trajectories of birds with unprecedented resolution and attempt to relate movement patterns to local stressors and attractors. Finally, the overall findings would be used to populate agent-based models to derive probabilistic patterns of seabird movement according to circumstance.
Eligibility
Candidates must normally hold an undergraduate degree at 2.1 level in Biosciences or a related subject, or a master’s degree with a minimum overall grade at ‘Merit’ (or Non-UK equivalent as defined by Swansea University).
English Language requirements: If applicable – IELTS 6.5 overall (with at least 6.0 in each individual component) or Swansea recognised equivalent.
Due to funding restrictions, this scholarship is open to applicants eligible to pay tuition fees at the UK rate only, as defined by UKCISA regulations.
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