Fully funded 3 years PhD studentship for Uk and international students

Social and ecological drivers of parental care
Institution: Queen's University Belfast, School of Biological Sciences
Supervisors: Dr Isabella Capellini (QUB); Dr Domhnall Jennings (QUB);
Dr Catherine Sheard (University of Aberdeen)

There are astonishing differences in whether, how, and for how long,
animals care for their offspring.Despite the considerable research
on parental care, our understanding of how and why care diversity
originates in species lacking care and of what promotes its persistence
over evolutionary time is very limited.

Aim. By combining state of the art phylogenetic comparative approaches
and large scale datasets of parental care forms across hundreds of species
in highly diverse taxonomic groups, this project will test hypotheses on
whether species' reproductive ecology, social behaviour and offspring
characteristics, promote the evolutionary origin and/or maintenance of
male and female parental care behaviours in vertebrates (amphibians,
mammals, fish, dinosaurs, birds) and/or invertebrates (e.g. crustaceans).

The student will have the opportunity to shape the project to better
fit their own research interests by selecting which questions to address
and in which taxonomic group. The project benefits by access to already
assembled datasets of parental care diversity in thousands of amphibians,
mammals and fish (e.g. Furness and Capellini 2019, 2022; Vanadzina et
al. 2021; West and Capellini 2016).

Deadline: 7th of February 2025

Full project description and link to applicationhere.

Isabella Capellini <isab972@yahoo.co.uk>

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