School of Life Sciences

Location:  Lincoln
Salary:   From £33,797 pro rata
Please note, this post is fixed term for 12 months, full time at 1.0 FTE
Closing Date:   Friday 02 July 2021
Interview Date:   Friday 23 July 2021
Reference:  COS828

The University of Lincoln is looking to appoint a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow to join the Bioacoustics and Sensory Biology Lab, in the School of Life Sciences. The post is funded by a NERC-DBNSF Award entitled ‘Multidisciplinary Approach to Bioacoustics: Integrating phylogenomics, biophysics, and functional genomics to unravel the evolution of hearing and singing in katydids’. This is an international project between Texas A&M University, Lincoln and St. Andrews. The project’s overarching aim is to study the evolution and genetic basis of acoustic communication, capitalising on the most speciose and ancient lineage of the extant singing insects, the Ensifera (katydids, crickets and relatives). This project is multidisciplinary, integrating phylogeny, functional morphology, biophysics, and comparative genomics to test key hypotheses about when, how, and why acoustic signalling has evolved over 300 million years of ensiferan diversification.

A priority of the project component is to understand the complexity of the katydid ear function, specifically the biophysics components of the inner ear, the project will integrate two major objectives: 1) investigate the biophysical properties of in the inner ear fluid (e.g., viscosity, fluidity); 2) in-real-time measurement of cilium motility of auditory mechanoreceptors.

You will conduct dynamic analysis of the bush-cricket inner ear organ with iterative exchanges of results between this project and that of other group members. You will carry full responsibility for the practical implementation of fluid dynamic component of the project and for driving iterative exchanges with results from other group members. 

You will use analytical and instrumental techniques to generate testable predictions that describe the fluidic properties of the katydid inner ear and ciliar motion of the auditory sensilla in response to a travelling wave. The main theme of this project is the implementation of innovative techniques (e.g., Multiple particle tracking microrheology, Epifluorescence microscopy, phase-contrast microscopy) that help us to characterise anisotropic fluids and flows, and to measure ciliar activity in real time.

You will help write and publish high quality peer-reviewed scientific papers. In addition to contributing to the development of research proposals and applications for external funding, you will contribute to the dissemination of the results to the scientific community through presentation at international conferences and workshops, and to the general public through public lectures and interviews with the media where appropriate.