The Neuman-Lee Lab at Arkansas State University (A-State), in partnership with Dr. Sinlan (Sheila) Poo of Memphis Zoo, is seeking a motivated, organized, and independent PhD student to work on an Institute for Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) funded project. The funded work links nine zoological organizations in the United States to build a collaborative network of individuals and an interactive database focused on reptilian immunology. Leveraging the existing diversity of living reptilian collections, the funded project will connect zookeepers, veterinary staff, and researchers together to establish basic immunological parameters across reptilian taxa.

The student will be responsible for:

1. Analyzing samples using a variety of techniques, such as microbiocidal assays, qPCR, and flow cytometry

2. Working closely with zoo staff from various departments and backgrounds to creative a positive, collaborative, and productive cross-agency partnership 

3. Mentoring, nurturing, and developing research capacity of undergraduate students working on this project

4. Effectively communicating science through formal publications and scientific presentations

5. Engaging in science communication with the public

6. Fostering a positive, collaborative, safe, and encouraging professional environment

Great apes held in captivity need resilience: the ability to ‘bounce back’ following setbacks. This is particularly true for apes entering sanctuaries or rehabilitation centres, as they have usually endured traumatic conditions, including killing of their mother and separation from their social group, which can have lasting psychological effects, impairing their resilience. This in turn threatens to reduce the effectiveness of conservation programs involving rehabilitation and release of ex-captive individuals, as reduced resilience may make it less likely that apes will be able to thrive in the wild.

However, even zoo-housed apes may need to build their resilience. One of the factors contributing to low resilience is experiencing a lack of agency. This affects captive apes in all settings because they often have no choice about when to feed and forage, what to eat, or which individuals to socialise with. Routine management practices which are important for the apes’ health or their conservation may impose stressful or frustrating situations which they cannot escape or avoid (e.g., regular veterinary health checks or treatment involving capture and sedation/anaesthesia, temporary or longer-term separation from their social group during treatment and recovery). Collection management (such as species breeding programmes) may mean that individuals are moved between institutions and must integrate into a new social group. Unlike dispersal in the wild, captive apes have no control over when this occurs and which group they join.

We will build on pilot research in our group on orangutans and gorillas housed in zoos, which has identified promising avenues for progress in addressing this problem. We have integrated research on fostering resilience in humans and other non-human animal species and used it to design interventions to build their resilience. In this project we aim to develop and test these techniques on great apes, as well as investigating how management techniques can be altered to provide apes with a sense of agency. As a result we hope to develop techniques which will build resilience, improving the welfare and conservation outcomes for great apes in zoos, sanctuaries and rehabilitation centres.

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Deadline: January 7, 2026

Many endangered species do not breed well in captivity, and while the causes of breeding failure are often not well understood, free mate choice may provide a simple and effective way to reduce the frequency of failure. However, mate choice also has the potential to reduce the genetic diversity of the population, which conservation breeding programs explicitly aim to avoid, and it is unclear whether the benefits of choice to the individuals are outweighed by the genetic costs to the population.

You will investigate the potential role of mate choice in improving conservation breeding outcomes by:

1. Quantify the potential benefits of allowing free mate choice using existing animal data from published studies and global zoo breeding records (using the ZIMS database)

2. Testing the reproductive benefits of free mate choice in zoo animals. Initial trials will compare group-breeding Grosbeak starlings (Scissirostrum dubium) at Chester Zoo with pair-breeding populations at other European zoos; this may then be expanded to other species.

3. Estimating whether free mate choice reduces the genetic diversity of the zoo populations tested above, and whether this reduction breaches existing conservation breeding guidelines.

This will be the first project to explicitly test why mate choice is beneficial in some populations but not others, taking advantage of the massive amount of breeding data available from zoo records. This will provide a better understanding of the adaptive benefits of mate choice in small populations, both in captivity and in the wild. 

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This is an interdisciplinary project led by a team of behavioural biologists and conservation scientists, designed in cooperation with Chester Zoo. You will have the opportunity to design and carry out data collection in zoo animals, while collaborating with animal care staff and conservation scientists. 

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Deadline: January 7, 2026

Population bottlenecks erode genetic variation, which makes threatened species susceptible to viral epidemics. So, what makes an individual Resistant, Tolerant, or Susceptible (R/T/S) to a virus? That is the key question we aim to answer in this PhD study. We have gathered data on viral outbreaks over ~20 years and sequenced hundreds of bird genomes, working on some of the best-studied avian models (Mauritius parakeet, ringneck parakeet, red-crowned parakeet, and orange-bellied parrot). The PhD candidate will study data from the Mauritius parakeet to develop an AI model that can predict the response to viral infection based on genomics data. Moreover, there is the option to conduct fieldwork in Mauritius to gather additional field data, and for comparative genomics analyses.  

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Deadline: January 7, 2026 (to start October 2026)