Rogers Lab - University of New South Wales

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Research Opportunities

If you are interested in applying for a Post doctoral position or a PhD with the Rogers Lab (excluding any specific opportunities listed above) please forward a copy of your University transcript along with your CV and a short description of project ideas to Dr Tracey Rogers at:
tracey.rogers@unsw.edu.au

For further information on undertaking postgraduate research at the University of New South Wales please refer to the Graduate Research School's website:
http://www.grs.unsw.edu.au/homepage.html

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Honours and MPhil programs are available within the Rogers Lab. If you are interested in applying for one of the projects below please forward a copy of your University transcript along with your CV to
tracey.rogers@unsw.edu.au



                                                                                              Credit: T Rogers

Dealing with starvation: how do mammals cope?

In collaboration with Tamsin O’Connell, Cambridge University, U.K., and Alejandro Carlini, Instituto Antártico Argentino, Argentina

There are conflicting theories on how mammals deal with nitrogen metabolism while fasting which has major implications for techniques used to assess food-web ecology. You will explore this mystery using the ideal model, the southern elephant seal, a three tonne beast that fasts for two months during its breeding season, and at this time can lose over half its body weight. You will use sequential samples that have been collected over three years and taken at weekly intervals, from known males from two a populations, the first, dominant harem holding males and the second, subordinate males.

Non-invasive assessment of health status of humpback whales

In collaboration with the Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Institute of Zoology, RZS London, U.K.

In this study you will examine whether the breath of free-swimming blue whales can be used to describe the microbial communities of their respiratory system. Microbial communities may provide a proxy to follow population health as well as being a tool to look at social relationships between whales by examining the patterns of shared microbial communities between animals. You will use ribosomal tag pyrosequencing methods to describe community structure and biodiversity.

Life in a dynamic landscape, do mammals comply with the current rules?

In collaboration with Alejandro Carlini, Instituto Antártico Argentino, Argentina

How closely do the theories of animal space use patterns and body size scaling predict the behaviour of mammals that live in mobile marine environments? You will follow the movement patterns of 50 leopard seals satellite tracked through the Antarctic pack ice. This is a habitat where the substrate used by the animals continuously moves and at rates of well over 2 km/hour. Each seal is followed hourly and datasets range from time periods as long as 11 months. How does the seals movement compare with models of habitat movement, and with models of mammals from static terrestrial environments?