research opportunities in the Elphick lab
PAID
POSITIONS
There are
currently no paid positions in the lab. Most paid positions are for
ornithological field work during the summer. Preference is usually given to
people who already have basic bird identification skills and/or have experience
with a range of outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, canoeing, etc.
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If
you are a work study student, or are interested in gaining research experience
for credit (or even fun), then we could use help with any of the projects
listed below during the academic year. Students who are interested in
developing a project of their own as a part of the research they do in the lab
(e.g., for an undergraduate thesis, or through the Summer Undergraduate
Research Fellowship program) are especially encouraged.
If
you are interested in gaining research experience in the lab, please send Chris Elphick a note describing
your academic record (a copy of your transcript is best), your reasons for
wanting research experience, and SPECIFIC ideas you have about which aspect of
our lab's research you would be most interested in and why. If you don't do
these things it will tell me that you haven't researched the lab's work very
well.
None
of the projects listed below require specialized skills. But all of the work in
our lab requires a good attitude, a willingness to learn, the initiative to
work independently and to develop ideas of your own, a healthy sense of humor,
and an ability to put up with Chris's taste in music (if you're not sure on
this last point, check out Radio
Paradise). If you know something about birds, then that would help, but we'll
do our best to indoctrinate you even if you don't. For most projects (except
those involving field work) hours are flexible. Everyone doing independent
research in the lab is invited to our weekly lab meetings, where we sit around
eating stuff filled with fats and sugar and discuss work being conducted by lab
members. If you come to lab meetings, however, we expect you to participate
rather than to sit quietly in the corner. More on lab meetings, here.
Saltmarsh bird ecology and conservation. For the last few years, we
have been studying saltmarsh sparrows and seaside sparrows along the
Importance of rice
agriculture for waterbirds. Rice is one of the world's most important crops, and occupies
a huge area of land worldwide. Unlike most crops it is grown in flooded
conditions, and in some areas has been shown to contribute greatly to waterbird
conservation. We are currently compiling a database documenting the use of rice
fields by waterbirds globally. Work on this project would involve literature
searches and database management. There are also several ways in which the
database could be used to develop an undergraduate thesis project (e.g., to
look at global patterns of biodiversity, or to look at conservation questions).
To read a little about work on birds in
Conservation of birds in
agricultural settings. Expanding on our work on birds in rice fields, we have begun
reviewing the literature to find out what we know about the value of other
crops to wildlife. This work has led to several ideas that could be developed
as field projects here in
Waterbird monitoring. Monitoring many species of
waterbirds (e.g., shorebirds, seabirds, waterfowl) is difficult for many
reasons. One of the most fundamental is that it is difficult to count birds when
they occur in big flocks. Unfortunately, we don't know very much about how good
people are at counting birds in flocks, or about how much mistakes influence
our ability to estimate population trends. One solution is to create computer
simulations of the counting process to experimental test the effects of
different types of errors. This work would make an undergraduate thesis project
for someone with basic programming skills and an interest in real-world bird
conservation.
Web site development. We are currently
(constantly!) in the process of developing several web sites associated with the
work being done in the lab. Anyone with web site design skills interested in
helping us to do this would be welcomed with open arms (and generous slabs of
blackberry pie at lab meetings).