graduate and post-doctoral opportunities in fish ecology

[sale at uwindsor.ca]

Colleagues,
Please draw this announcement to the attention of pospective graduate
students or post-docs.

          Research opportunities in recruitment ecology of fishes
I am seeking up to three graduate students, and one post-doctoral to
contribute to two research projects in my lab.  The first project concerns
recruitment ecology of walleye in Lake Erie, commenced this year, and can
support two additional students.  The second, concerns recruitment ecology
of reef fishes in meso-america, will commence this winter, and will support
two additional students plus a post-doc.

While the projects are structured financially so that they will be most
attractive to Canadians, I am interested in students of any nationality who
have the necessary academic and non-academic skills.  The post-doctoral
position is also open to all nationalities, and is for three years.
Non-academic skills for both projects include small boat experience.  The
reef fish project also requires SCUBA experience, and students or post-docs
with some conversational Spanish will also be favored.

The walleye recruitment project is a multidisciplinary project including a
microchemist (Dr. Brian Fryer) and a molecular geneticist (Dr. Brian Dixon)
as well as three ecologists (myself, Dr. Tim Johnson from Ontario Ministry
of Natural Resources, and Dr. Tom Pratt, Post-doc on the project).  Walleye
breed in a number of locations within Lake Erie and in its tributary
rivers, but the fish subsequently mix extensively within the lake.  Our
project seeks to improve capacity for fisheries management by determining
the relative importance of different spawning grounds.  We plan to
discriminate fish produced on different spawning grounds in the lake or in
tributary rivers, and to assess the relative success of recruits derived
from different grounds.  There is a broad range of possible research topics
within the project, including ones that focus on use of microchemical
analyses of fish otoliths, or of molecular immunogenetics to provide
natural tags identifying fish origins.  Walleye are the most important fish
in Lake Erie, supporting a major recreational fishery on both sides of the
border, and the largest commercial freshwater fishery (in economic value)
in the world, on the Canadian side of the border.  Funding is secure for
three years with possibility of renewal.

The reef fish project, ECONAR (Ecological CONnections Among Reefs), is also
multidisciplinary, including a microchemist (Fryer), two molecular
geneticists (Dixon and Dr. Dan Heath), two coral reef ecologists (Dr. Bruce
Hatcher, and myself), and two physical oceanographers (Drs. Barry Ruddick
and Jinyu Sheng), plus two post-doctoral fellows and several students.  The
project is centered at University of Windsor but Dixon is at Univ. of
Waterloo, and Hatcher, Ruddick and Sheng are at Dalhousie University.  The
project is designed to run collaboratively with a large international
development project driven by CCAD and the World Bank, and involving
Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras, with the probable participation of
a group of European scientists funded through the EU INCO-DEV program.
ECONAR, itself, is funded by Canada for three years with possibility of
renewal, and there will be opportunities for graduate students recruited to
Windsor to focus on the ecological components, or on the molecular
approaches being used.

The goal of ECONAR is to characterize the extent of interconnection among
reef fish communities on a regional scale, by examining patterns of larval
recruitment, and applying several techniques to determine origins of larvae
recruited to particular sites.  This is one of the most important
unanswered questions for our understanding of coral reef ecology, and for
the effective management of marine protected areas and coral reef systems.
The integration of ecological, molecular, and physical oceanographic
methods, the international collaboration, and the fact that this project is
being undertaken on a spatial scale measured in several hundreds of
kilometers, make this a unique opportunity for talented students interested
in tropical marine science.

Both projects are outlined on my web-site:  http://www.uwindsor.ca/Sale
(tense is sensative, lower case s will not work)

Interested persons should reply, sending a resume, a statement of interests
and experience, an unofficial undergraduate record (list of courses taken,
and grades obtained sufficient at this stage), a statement of long-term
career goals, and the names and e-mail contacts for three individuals able
to act as academic referees.  I anticipate recruiting people by January
2001, although arrival in May 2001 is also possible.

Peter F. Sale
Professor of Biology, and
Acting Director, Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research
University of Windsor
Windsor ON Canada N9B 3P4

519-253-3000, ext. 2727
519-971-3609 FAX
sale at uwindsor.ca