University of St Andrews
- Applications accepted all year round
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
About the Project
While superficially different, these two areas of research share several questions in common (How many species? How many of each species? How are the species distributed spatially? How should we sample?) that differ fundamentally only in whether the species in question are flora and fauna or nucleic acids and proteins.
In addition, direct application of genomics within an ecology setting is now becoming more common, with environmental DNA a hot topic for research.
In this project the student will examine the scope for application of mature methods from one of the two disciplines within the other (e.g. formalizing the use of capture-recapture methods in genomics, or taking models from cancer analyses and applying them to eDNA questions). There will be particular interest in questions, such as population size, where traditional methods in statistical ecology and methods using molecular data can be used to answer a question, and the project may consider how the approaches should be combined. The student may choose to focus on the theoretical aspects of the questions or be driven by a particular application.
Funding Notes
Fully funded scholarship places (fees, plus stipend of approx. £19,162) are typically available for well-qualified students. UK, EU and other overseas students are all encouraged to apply. Further details of the application and selection procedure are at View Website (pdf - see last page) and View Website.
Learn more and how to apply: