We are looking for a highly motivated student for a 4-year, fully funded PhD position to join my group at the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies of the University of Zurich. The project will aim to investigate how competitive interactions can change evolutionary trajectories. Using the remarkably sexually dimorphic fruit fly Drosophila prolongata, the objective will be to test evolution in action and set up an experimental evolution experiment to examine how the social environment – and specifically the intensity of competition for limited sexual partners and/or food resources – shape the evolution of aggressiveness and the associated behavioural plasticity. Experimental evolution is a powerful approach to study how organisms respond and adapt to environmental conditions imposed by the experimenter. Drosophila flies have long been model organisms in experimental evolution studies, given that these species have a short life cycle and are amenable to experiments manipulating environmental conditions at the population level.
Location: UZH Irchel Campus, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland Start of employment: spring/summer 2024. Application deadline: 15 March 2024 More information on our research here and link to apply here.