3 GRADUATE STUDENT POSITIONS AVAILABLE

There are immediate opportunities for qualified graduate students (MSc & PhD) to work in Dan Heath’s Evolutionary & Conservation Genetics lab at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER) at the University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada). Available projects include;

1) BC rainbow tout conservation genetics (MSc): The project will include field sampling and molecular genetic lab analysis of the Babine Lake rainbow trout, one of the few large-body morph populations in British Columbia, Canada. Working with BC Provincial and First Nations fisheries technicians, the student will collect DNA samples from adult and juvenile rainbow trout in Babine Lake as well as from tributary spawning populations. Microsatellite and mtDNA analysis of the samples will be performed in the Conservation Genetics and Environmental Genomics Facilities at the GLIER.  The goal will be to identify the stock composition in the lake and assign sport and food-fishery captures to specific source populations.

2) Feeding ecology of Lake Erie yellow perch predators (PhD): The project will include developing molecular genetic methods to determine gut contents to species level, validating the approach with captive yellow perch predators, and applying the technique to wild-caught yellow perch predators. The student will apply quantitative real-time PCR techniques with species-diagnostic mtDNA fragments to quantitatively determine the species present in digested gut content matter taken from field-caught pisciverous fish. The goal of the project is to determine the relative role of predation on Lake Erie yellow perch population structure and dynamics.

3) Mate choice in Chinook salmon: effects on fitness (PhD): The student will work as part of a team investigating the relative fitness of artificially-bred versus naturally-bred Chinook salmon. Adult Chinook salmon will be provided with the opportunity for mate choice, while fish from the same stock will be bred artificially as a control group.  Behavioural, immunological, physiological and genetic analyses will be used to partition differences in performance of the offspring into additive genetic, environmental and genotype-by-environmental interaction components, and ultimately to assess the economics of the breeding strategies for aquaculture and conservation production. The student will focus on using molecular and quantitative genetics to partition offspring trait variance into genetic, environmental and interaction components. The student will also have the to opportunity to assess gene expression patterns using both Q-RT-PCR and DNA microarray approaches.

Contact Dr. Heath at       (519) 253-3000 (ext 3762)

dheath@uwindsor.ca