Image © Yellowj/Shutterstock
Project Overview
This collaborative studentship is potentially funded by the University of Reading as part of a strategic partnership to support innovative collaborative research between the University and the Natural History Museum.
The Cambrian explosion was a pivotal episode in the history of life. Diverse and distinctive animals appear in the fossil record across this interval, with nearly all the major groups of living animals making their first appearances by the end of the period. It is widely agreed that rapid evolutionary change occurred during the Cambrian (~539 to 485 million years ago), but the pace and duration of this diversification event remain unclear.
Echinoderms (e.g. starfish and sea urchins) are an ideal group with which to investigate the tempo and mode of the Cambrian explosion because they have a rich Cambrian fossil record, including several morphologically distinct body plans. However, the phylogenetic relationships of different groups of fossil echinoderms are contested and, as a result, key questions related to echinoderm evolution during the Cambrian explosion remain unanswered. To address this, the student will use X-ray microtomography and new deep learning tools to characterise the three-dimensional morphology of key fossil taxa, including undescribed specimens from the Natural History Museum’s collections.
This project will be supervised by Dr Imran Rahman and Dr Tim Ewin (Natural History Museum), Andrew Meade and Chris Venditti (University of Reading), and Frankie Dunn (University of Oxford). They will have access to all the specimens, instruments and software needed to undertake the project at the NHM and UoR, with training provided by the supervisors. There will be ample opportunity for the student to shape the direction of the project, for example by selecting the fossil specimens (potentially including undescribed material from the NHM’s collections) to focus on or developing and applying new deep learning models for analysing CT scans.
The planned research will require short trips to visit museums in North America and Europe in years one and two of the project, with these costs fully covered by the financial support provided by the UoR and NHM. Specialist training in echinoderm taxonomy and systematics, image segmentation and phylogenetic methods will be provided by the project supervisors.
The student will be registered at UoR. They will be hosted at the NHM during the first two years of the project and will spend the third year at UoR, giving them the opportunity to meet and interact with scientists from both institutions.
Eligibility
For enquiries, please contact Imran Rahman
Applicants should hold or expect to gain a minimum of a 2:1 Bachelor’s Degree, Master’s Degree with Merit, or equivalent, in palaeontology, geology, zoology, evolutionary biology or a closely related discipline.
We will also consider candidates with different academic paths but with experience acquired from a research position, or equivalent, that is relevant to the topic of the PhD project.
With a commitment to improving diversity in biological sciences, we encourage applications from underrepresented groups.
To apply, please complete an online application for a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at https://bit.ly/ReadingPhDApply .
Please upload a CV and Cover Letter with your application.
When applying, if the application system prompts you to submit a research proposal, please paste in the project title and move on to the next step in the application. When the system asks about funding, please enter Studentship DRC24-003 in the relevant box.
Due to the nature of the funding, this studentship is only open to candidates from the UK/Republic of Ireland.
Funding Notes
Starts September 2024
Funding covers fees at the Home rate and pays a stipend of £18,622 per year.
Duration of funding: 3 years
Tuition fees at the UK/Republic of Ireland level, plus an annual stipend paid at the UKRI minimum level (£18,622 for 2023/24, the level for 2023/24 is awaiting confirmation).
Further reading
Li Y, Dunn FS, Murdock DJE, Guo J, Rahman IA, Cong P. 2023. Cambrian stem-group ambulacrarians and the nature of the ancestral deuterostome. Current Biology 33: 2359–2366.
Novack-Gottshall PM, Sultan A, Smith NS, Purcell J, Hanson KE, et al. 2022. Morphological volatility precedes ecological innovation in early echinoderms. Nature Ecology & Evolution 6: 262–272.
Deline B, Thompson JR, Smith NS, Zamora S, Rahman IA, Sheffield SL, Ausich WI, Kammer TW, Sumrall CD. 2020. Evolution and development at the origin of a phylum. Current Biology 30: 1672–1679.
Zamora S, Rahman IA. 2014. Deciphering the early evolution of echinoderms with Cambrian fossils. Palaeontology 57: 1105–1119.
Smith AB, Zamora S, Álvaro JJ. 2013. The oldest echinoderm faunas from Gondwana show that echinoderm body plan diversification was rapid. Nature Communications 4: 1385