Opportunities

Any current or upcoming funded opportunities for PhD stundenships, technician positions, and postdocs will be listed here. I also flag any funded positions with collaborators on projects I’m involved with.

If you have access to your own sources of PhD or postdoc funding, or think we may be able to support independent fellowship applications then please get in touch. I am also very happy to discuss project possibilities – particularly using our guppy or shrimp systems in the fishlab – with any students thinking about an MSc by research at Exeter.

We aim to be a supportive, inclusive and collaborative research group that welcomes everyone.

**PhD opportunity** Behavioural evo-ecotoxicology in cherry shrimp starting Sept 2025

Chemical pollution of freshwater environments can change aspects of behaviour, life history, or reproductive biology in many organisms. But how might these changes impact downstream ecological and evolutionary processes. Behavioural traits are sensitive to pollutants, but are also the first line of defence against predators and other natural threats. So small changes in behaviour could have big ecological consequences for individuals, and might also change the patterns of variation – among individuals and genotypes – that provide the raw material for natural selection and evolution.

This project has the broad aim of investigating ‘evo-eco’ consequences of sublethal pollutant exposure. It will do so by focusing on the behavioural and evolutionary ecotoxicology of a freshwater invertebrate, the cherry shrimp (Neocaridina heteropoda) exposed to pesticides. This will be a lab-based project with an interdisciplinary team of supervisors that spans perspectives from behavioural ecology, evolutionary genetics, and ecotoxicology.

Funding for this project – which will start in September 2025 – will be advertised soon as part of the NERC funded GW4 doctoral training program. ***Link for application coming soon**. Expect a deadline of early January for apploications.