CLOSED CALL

 

We are looking for a candidate for a pre-doctoral contract within the PhD training programme of the Spanish State Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research Plan (formerly known as FPI).

The overarching goal of the project (see a broader summary below) is to uncover mechanisms that promote heterogeneity in the competence of birds as hosts of malaria parasites. Focusing on various physiological and behavioural adaptations of hosts and parasites, the PhD thesis will provide opportunities to do observational and experimental research that combines behavioural ecology, genomics, RNA-seq and population structure analyses. Work will be based at the UCM School of Biological Sciences (Evolution and Conservation Biology Research Group), and will be done in collaboration with German and Swedish colleagues.

Eligibility criteria include having an official Master's degree, among others necessary to be accepted in a doctoral programme at the time of formalising the contract (around March/April 2022 based on previous calls). Detailed information on the conditions of the call can be found here (information in Spanish, includes FAQs, templates, etc.):

Aid for pre-doc contracts for the training of doctors 2021

We will value general skills and attitude, such as collaborative spirit and capacity to communicate in English. The successful candidate should not be afraid of learning diverse techniques such as handling birds in field expeditions, coding in R and bash and ability to manage big datasets in linux-based cluster environments.

Prospective applicants please send the following information to Javier Pérez-Tris and Alejandro Llanos-Garrido (jperez@ucm.es, a.llanos@ucm.es) before Thursday 4 November:

• Your CV. Please use the template available from the program, available in Spanish (here) or in English (here). Please highlight relevant academic marks (apart from your score in the Undergraduate and Master theses, which is specifically asked for in the CV template, you may like to highlight your performance in courses you liked the most or you consider relevant for this project, general marks if you consider these are descriptive of your capacities, etc.).
• Short motivation letter.
• Contact e-mails of two references (no reference letter is required).

Candidates can apply to only one contract within this call, which entails much commitment from both sides and forces us to start the selection process before the call closes.

 

Summary of the grant that will fund the PhD research

Title: Heterogeneity of bird host competence for blood parasites across scales

Reference: PID2020-116121GB-I00

Parasites play important ecological roles by causing diseases that limit host populations, but some hosts are more capable to control or to stand parasite burden than others (they show different resistance and tolerance, respectively). Different outcomes of the host-parasite interaction are expected when hosts invest differently in tolerance vs resistance and parasites show different infectivity, resulting in heterogeneity among hosts in competence (the capacity of a host to transmit parasites to new hosts). Host competence varies within individuals (plasticity), among individuals in one population, among populations of a species, or among species. The latter phenomenon is especially relevant at the community level, where host species are in principle exposed to all local parasites but variation in host specificity and prevalence is the rule.

Knowing when, where, how and why hosts show different degrees of competence for parasites is key to predict the probability of infection in host-parasite interactions. To study transmission heterogeneity, or the differences within and among hosts, locations or species in their contribution to pathogen spread in a holistic framework, and to understand (and predict) parasite roles in population limitation and structuring of ecological networks, an integrative approach is imperative. Furthermore, this is also of vital importance to palliate the burden of disease, prevent disease emergence, reduce parasite impact on farming, and optimize biological pest control. Using as model the most common blood parasites of birds (haemosporidians of the genera Haemoproteus, Plasmodium and Leucocytozoon), we hypothesise that genetic features and physiological status of individual hosts will predict host competence for haemosporidian parasites, and this individual variation will translate at higher scales into predictable differences in competence among populations and species.

We will approach these questions focusing on bird hosts (vectors are not studied here) and their infectiousness (a component of host competence). Using field monitoring and experiments with individual blackcaps Sylvia atricapilla, and taking advantage of state-of-the-art genomic and transcriptomic tools developed by members of the group of applicants (including annotated reference genomes and RNA-seq data of blackcaps and various haemosporidian parasites), we will dissect the mechanisms underlying true host competence (production of transmissible stages at a given level of infection), improving our understanding of variation in host competence and its impact on bird and parasite fitness. Moving up a scale, we will analyse whole blackcap genomes to detect parasite-driven selection on protein-coding genes with resistance and tolerance function, thus bridging the mechanisms that shape individual host competence with variation among populations facing different parasite pressures. Moving up another scale, we will explore which species traits (such as abundance, body size, diet or life history) best explain variation in host competence among species in the community. To this end, we will take advantage of our monitoring of a tropical bird community, where high species diversity and large phenotypic variance among species allows increasing the chances to uncover how species diversity translates into heterogeneity of bird host competence for blood parasites.