[Taxacom] Doctoral fellowships in spider systematics

[christian thompson]

Attention to ALL:

 A great opportunity to work on a winning team of systematists.

>>> "Gustavo Hormiga" <hormiga at gwu.edu> 11/29/06 11:24AM >>>
Doctoral fellowships in spider systematics

We are seeking graduate student applicants to enroll in doctoral programs to
study the systematics of oonopid spiders. These fellowships will cover
tuition, stipend and research expenses.

The US National Science Foundation has recently funded a Planetary
Biodiversity Inventory (PBI) project on "goblin spiders" (Oonopidae). These
small, and often intricately ornamented spiders, are distributed worldwide
in tropical areas, where they reach their highest abundance in canopies and
leaf litter. The team of scientists leading this effort include Norman
Platnick (PI), Rosemary Gillespie, Gustavo Hormiga, Charles Griswold, and
Petra Sierwald from the US (co-PIs); Mark Harvey from Australia; and Rudy
Jocqué from Belgium; an additional 18 scientists from 8 countries are
involved in the effort (see http://research.amnh.org/oonopidae/)

The goals of the project are to develop an understanding of the biodiversity
of the spiders globally, which will require species delineation and
description, field work in key sites throughout the world, and comprehensive
morphological and molecular analyses of phylogenetic relationships. In the
course of the work we will be developing novel approaches to streamline
species description and identification.

We seek graduate student applications for doctoral fellowship positions at
George Washington University (Gustavo Hormiga, hormiga at gwu.edu) and
University of California Berkeley (Rosemary Gillespie,
gillespi at nature.berkeley.edu). An additional position may be available at
the American Museum of Natural History (Norman Platnick, platnick at amnh.org;
the museum has very recently established its own free-standing graduate
program). For further information, please contact the relevant faculty
members at the different institutions.



Gustavo Hormiga

Ruth Weintraub Associate Professor of Biology Department of Biological
Sciences, The George Washington University Washington, D.C. 20052 Tel. (202)
994-0302 (lab), 994-1095 (office), FAX (202) 994-6100

E-mail: hormiga at gwu.edu 

 

Home Page: http://www.gwu.edu/~spiders 

ATOL Project: http://research.amnh.org/atol/files/index.html 

PEET Project: http://www.gwu.edu/~spiders/peet.htm 

PBI Goblin Spider Project: http://research.amnh.org/oonopidae 

LinyGen: http://www.gwu.edu/~linygen/