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Paid Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Position in the Jones Lab
Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Title: Restoration intern
Requested for: Spring Semester 2014 (January 13th - April
30th)
Hours per week: 10
Pay:
$10/hour. Potential for internship
credit in addition to pay.
Position Description: As resource use grows and land uses change,
restoration of degraded ecosystems is becoming a key tool to stem biodiversity
loss. Restoration historically has had a botanical bias, with less focus on
higher trophic levels. Trophic interactions help determine community structure
and ecosystem function, leaving key components of responses to restoration
poorly understood. In this project, a student will examine the community
structure and trophic interactions of small mammals within a tallgrass prairie.
The undergraduate will help trap small mammal populations and perform seed
removal experiments in prairies that have been restored from 1-25 years ago.
Specific learning objectives are to: 1) describe how mammal populations change
with time since restoration and 2) evaluate how seed removal by small mammals
changes through time and relate those changes with observed plant diversity.
List of duties and responsibilities: Trap small mammals at Nachusa. Help deploy
seed predation experiments at Nachusa. Collect and analyze data from Nachusa.
Perform laboratory duties to help process stable isotopic samples from
Nachusa. Attend weekly Jones lab
meetings.
Qualifications: The ideal student will have: 1) taken
biology, ecology, or ENVS 302; 2) a strong work ethic; 3) A GPA of 3.0 or
higher and 4) the ability to work in extreme conditions.
Information on how the student should apply: Email: 1. Letter of interest which includes
career goals 2. Resume 3. Unofficial transcripts to Dr. Holly Jones at
hjones@niu.edu by December 31st, 2013.
