sue_bertram
We seek highly motivated students to participate in a carnivore research program in Kenya funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The program will support a few advanced undergraduate students to live and work in Kenya for several months. Students will participate in on-going research on African carnivores as research assistants to the Michigan State University Hyena Project. Students will collect day-to-day observations on the behavior, ecology, and demography of the spotted hyena. They will assist in managing our field camps in the Masai Mara National Reserve and will participate in a short course on science writing to prepare them for writing on our lab blog: msuhyenas.blogspot.com. Students will also be assigned to assist graduate students on targeted research projects. Starting date is flexible, but your application materials should include a date on which you would be available to fly to Kenya, from which US airport you would need to depart, and how long you would ideally like to stay in Kenya. Bear in mind that it usually takes 2-3 months just to learn everything you’ll need to learn in order to contribute to our research, which is a lot!
There are multiple projects in which you might be able to participate:
1. Vocal Signaling in a Social Mammal. Spotted hyena clans are structured by complex social hierarchies in which all individuals must learn their ranks. Navigating this social structure is likely facilitated by a number of signals, including vocal signals. This study investigates the role vocal signals play in the social interactions among spotted hyenas. Work will include recording hyena calls and conducting playback experiments with individuals. Behavioral responses will be recorded and recordings will be cut and analyzed.
2. Dispersal in male spotted hyenas. Spotted hyena males disperse between 2-5 years of age, permanently leaving their natal territory and immigrating into a new group of hyenas. During this process, males lose all environmental knowledge of the territory they inhabit, such as the location of food and water. Immigrating males also lose their natal rank, which allows them priority of access to carcasses and other resources, and they become the lowest ranking members of their new clan. This study investigates the coping mechanisms, both hormonal and behavioral, that male spotted hyenas employ while undergoing this drastic life change. Work will include darting, GPS collaring, and performing focal follows on dispersing males to record their behavior and to collect their fecal samples for hormone analysis.
3. Aggression and hierarchy in juvenile spotted hyenas. Spotted hyenas live in complex hierarchical societies where each individual has a specific social rank, which is determined and maintained through frequent aggressive interactions with other group members. Individuals learn their ranks as cubs at the communal den with guidance from their mothers, a process that takes many months. This research investigates the emergence of hierarchy in juvenile spotted hyenas and the roles of personality, society, and androgenic hormones in the ontogeny of social dominance. Students will work with multiple clans of spotted hyenas over the course of a year, and duties will include conducting experiments in addition to collecting basic demographic and behavioral data. The experiments will involve presenting cohorts of cubs with desirable food and monitoring their aggressive interactions.
4. Epigenetic development of aggressive and submissive traits in spotted hyenas. Environmental stimuli experienced by young mammals are expected to have long lasting effects on later adult traits through genome modifications. These environmental stimuli include social interactions with mother and peers, which may cause certain suites of genes to be up or down regulated leading to permanent or semi-permanent behavioral changes. Spotted hyenas, like primates, experience long periods of social development, and have been shown to display both rank-related and individual variation in aggressive and submissive traits. Work here will include focal observations of individual hyenas and mother offspring pairs to aid in quantifying the early social environment experienced by cubs as they develop. We will measure behavioral trails, to quantify individual levels of aggression and boldness, and will focus on darting to collect samples for later genomic analysis.
5. Sociality and Inhibitory Control. Spotted hyenas live in large and complex social systems that exhibit convergent evolution with those of cercopithicine primates. The social complexity hypothesis for the evolution of intelligence posits that the demands of social living were a dominant force in selecting for cognitive abilities. If the social complexity hypothesis applies to non-primate mammals, we should see convergent cognitive abilities in species with similar degrees of social complexity. Work will involve giving cognitive tasks to hyenas that test inhibitory control. Inhibitory control is the inhibition of a prepotent but inappropriate motor response when circumstances demand restraint. It is also an executive function of the neocortex and a fundamental aspect of intelligence. Testing inhibitory control in hyenas should shed light on how and why social complexity selects for greater intelligence.
6. Physiological mediation of cooperation: Spotted hyenas must join forces to defend their kills from lions, and sometimes also join forces to steal food from lions. This cooperation exposes the hyenas to considerable danger because a single swat from a lion can kill or maim a hyena. Low ranking hyenas join forces with higher-ranking clan-mates to help them, even though the low-ranking individuals are unlikely to get any food if the collective efforts are successful. We are interested to understand why they cooperate at all, and also in the endocrine substrates that might predispose some individuals to be more cooperative than others. Work here will focus on lion-hyena interactions, recording exactly who cooperates with whom, and collecting fecal samples for hormone analysis.
Travel costs (airline tickets, room, board, evacuation insurance, Kenyan visa, etc.) will be covered by project funds, and students will also receive a stipend of $550/month.
QUALIFICATIONS
· Must have completed the junior year of college by summer 2015
· Must be willing to live in a tented research camp in the African bush for up to one year
· Applicants must be U.S. citizens
· Must currently be enrolled in or recently graduated from a undergraduate program in Biology or related discipline
· Must possess strong writing & analytical skills
· Must possess a desire to conduct publishable research
· Must express a positive attitude and interest in learning about other cultures
· Must have strong interpersonal skills and social and emotional maturity
APPLICATION
If you are interested in participating in this research program, please send to Kenna Lehmann (Graduate Program Assistant) at kdsle...@gmail.com a single PDF file that includes the following documents by 1 January, 2015:
1) A cover letter describing what you hope to get from this IRES program, what particular strengths you bring to the program, your career plans, and any special considerations such as financial need, membership in groups currently under-represented in science, etc. Your cover letter should make clear in which of the projects mentioned above you are most keenly interested to particulate, and why
2) Your curriculum vitae (CV).
3) An official scanned transcript from your current college or university.
4) Names, positions or titles, and complete contact information for two faculty members able to comment on your academic performance.
Please include the following title in your email heading and PDF: IRES_Lastname_Firstname.
Letters of recommendation will be solicited for all finalists in our IRES finding competition. All letters of recommendation should be submitted via email to Dr Kay Holekamp at hole...@msu.edu. Please inform your letter writers that their letters must be received by 1 February, 2015.
Decisions regarding selection of applicants will be made by mid-February, 2015. For additional information about our ongoing research program, please visit the website of Dr. Kay Holekamp at http://hyenas.zoology.msu.edu/ and our research blog at http://msuhyenas.blogspot.com/.