Local Adaptation, Population Differentiation and Reproductive Isolation

This is a call for candidates for a 3-y graduate student contract granted by the "Santiago Grisolia" program (link, in Spanish), with start date scheduled for October 1, 2017.
The project will focus on within-species pre-mating and post-mating partial reproductive isolation between natural populations of rotifers that has diverged genetically, with stress in divergence due to local adaptation to environmental uncertainty. As an orientation, the project may imply sampling rotifer populations, zooplankton culture, behavioral biology methods, demographic techniques, mating experiments, molecular markers, DNA sequencing and phylogeographic analysis.

The successful candidate will work in the Evolutionary Ecology Lab at the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Valencia (EcoEvoLab-ICBiBE-UV), supervised by Manuel Serra ([Email Address Removed]). EcoEvoLab-ICBiBE-UV cooperates with several laboratories in USA and UK.

Eligibility requirements are:

• To have a university degree by a non-Spanish institution in biology, ecology, evolution or similar.
• To have finished the BS studies after January 30, 2014.
• To be in possession of at least 300 ECTS credits (BS + MSc), including 30 credits in a Master program.
• To be competent in English or Spanish.
• Not to be in possession of the title of Doctor.

Selection criteria will consider:

• University degrees in biology, ecology, evolutionary biology or similar.
• Research experience in the field of the project.
• Scientific contributions in the field of the project.
• English level.

The administrative services of the University of Valencia will provide support to the successful candidate in order the she/he to get a residence status in Spain allowing her/him to be contracted.

The official call will appear shortly in the bulletin of the Valencia Community Government. A narrow application time-window (10 days, from the official opening to the deadline) is expected. The interested students should submit as soon as possible his/her expression of interest to Manuel Serra, including a brief introducing letter, a CV and the name of two faculty or researchers able to report on the candidate record and capability. This submission does not substitute the formal application. Those preselected candidates will receive support by Manuel Serra in order to prepare the official application.