PhD Prospects

This may be a bit premature, but it's been a really exciting time as I look around for PhD projects. So far I've looked at around 6 different labs, and may have already gotten accepted by one! So here I just want to lay out the different options that I have so far, and which ones I'm most excited about.

1. The first project that really caught my eye was working with Dr. Urban at UConn studying the impact of climate change on salamanders. Anthropogenic climate change is a fact, and there is already an abundance of evidence of ecological impacts, including impacts towards salamanders. This was my top choice, but I wasn't fortunate enough to get it. So it goes. The email he sent me indicated that there were other applicants that complimented his current lab, which I suppose is fair enough. A friend of mine from UConn suggested that he just didn't get the funding for it. Which also makes a lot of sense. I have seen and heard of many projects this past year that got either defunded or completely screwed over due to the current administrations views on science. Just a lesson to you all - have backups!

2. Hellbenders at Virginia Tech. This is now my current top choice. A large component of this project appears to be outreach. I love this idea because there are a lot of private citizens that just don't know much about amphibians and reptiles, resulting in a fear. In my current position I've had to describe salamanders as "water-lizards" and reassure one woman that they weren't bacteria. In the future, I want to be part of an outreach group, both to disseminate general science knowledge, but also to inform the public about the benefits of herps and why they aren't to be afraid of. This project really plays to that desire of mine, and the fact that it's with hellbenders, the largest North American salamanders, really suits me! Still waiting to hear back from this project, but should come around the end of the month.


3. Alligator outreach at Clemson University. To be honest, I didn't really know about Clemson University before this. Apparently they have a good football team? Similar to the hellbender work, this has a big outreach component. I think a lot of people have a general misgiving around alligators, but they don't take much mind of people generally. One of my current field sites has alligators that I can see almost every time I go out. This is some exciting work though, if for no other reason than to say, "My PhD work was on alligators".

4. Mojave Desert Tortoises and the military. This project I think I already have the go ahead for, so that's rather exciting. Every since undergrad, I had wanted to work with Mojave tortoises - it was a rather common listing for summer internships, but I never got one. I remember one of the most frustrating aspects of those callouts though was that they asked for prior experience with Mojave tortoises. These are federally endangered animals that only have this one study working on the,, so I'm not sure how I could've gotten such previous experience!! Whatever. Now it looks like they want me. The interview was actually a lot of fun because I got to describe my experience being self-taught with R and ArcGIS.

5.  Terrapins in Alabama.I like turtles. This project sounds like a rather standard ecological study of terrapins with the inclusion of genetic variability. The idea being that I would investigate the link between natural or sexual selection on population structure and trait variation. Certainly sounds like a fun project.

6. Amphibian behavior plasticity OR Chytrid study. This lab was the most recent find, and I'm currently writing my cover letter for it. The behavior plasticity study is highly attractive to me. Around the end of my undergrad, I conducted a behavior study on tadpoles to identify plasticity in anti-predator behaviors when a possible unpalatable model (toad tadpole) was present. My results were actually really good (p = 0.53), but not at the significant level. Since then, I've really wanted another chance at conducting this project, or something facsimile. This position sounds like exactly what I was looking for. Also it's in Canada, so that's almost reason enough.

So far, these are the projects I've really taken a good look at with intent of applying. I won't stop looking until I have something locked down that really suits me. In addition, I'm looking to apply to UConn and Texas A&M in general - UConn because there are just so many salamanders up there, and A&M because it may give me a chance to continue working with black-spotted newts (they've really grown on me, and at this point I'm basically the foremost expert on them).