The East Carolina University (ECU) Fisheries Oceanography Lab run by Dr. Rebecca Asch is currently recruiting new graduate students to join our research team for the 2020-2021 academic year. We are actively seeking a new Ph.D. student, but applications by prospective Masters students are also welcome. The Asch Lab’s research program focuses on interactions between fisheries, plankton ecology, and climate change and climate variability. More specifically, the Asch Lab’s recent research focuses principally on the phenology of fish reproduction. Phenology refers to the study of seasonal, biological cycles and how they are influenced by weather and climate. In many ecosystems, warming temperatures are causing phenological events to occur earlier in the year. However, temperature sensitivity varies across marine organisms, such that seasonal events that previously occurred synchronously may become decoupled under climate change. In many marine ecosystems, fishes time reproduction t
o coincide with plankton blooms. Since zooplankton are the primary prey of fish larvae, greater asynchrony between these events could lead to increased larval fish mortality, slower growth, reduced recruitment of young fishes to fisheries, and declining commercial and recreational catches. Our research approach combines fieldwork, time series analysis, and ecosystem modeling. For more information about the Asch Lab, please see: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cas/biology/Rebecca_Asch.cfm. Also the most up-to-date list of Asch Lab publications is available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rebecca_Asch.
We seek students who are highly self-motivated, independent, and creative thinkers that are enthusiastic about pursuing a career in marine ecology, oceanography, and/or fisheries management. A strong background in quantitative ecology, computer programming (e.g., MATLAB, R, Python), and/or multivariate statistics is desired, but not required. There are several ongoing and soon to be initiated projects that a prospective student could develop into a dissertation or thesis:
*   Modeling climate change impacts on mismatches between the timing of fish reproduction and prey availability for larval fishes. The Asch Lab is using Earth System Models (ESMs) to understand how the seasonal timing of plankton blooms will shift under climate change and how such shifts may impact the survival of larval fishes (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14650). We are looking to expand this line of research to gain a more detailed understanding of the climate change responses of different plankton functional types included in ESMs.
*   Examining environmental drivers of phenological change and predator-prey dynamics among larval fishes and mesozooplankton in Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. This project will build off existing research in the Asch Lab examining how climate variability affects the seasonal timing of larval fish ingress into Beaufort Inlet, as well as a recently established time series where we are using ZooScan to identify zooplankton taxa in an automated fashion via a machine learning algorithm. Our ultimate goals are to better understand what environmental variables influence the seasonal occurrence of zooplankton and larval fishes within Beaufort Inlet, whether asynchrony in seasonal occurrence between trophic levels is likely to result from climate change, and how this may ultimately affect recruitment to fisheries.
Doctoral students can apply to work in the Asch Lab either through either the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in Biological Sciences (IDPBS) or the Integrated Coastal Sciences (ICS) Program. Information on these two Ph.D. programs is available at: https://www.ecu.edu/cs-cas/idpbs/ and https://coastal.ecu.edu/coastalstudies/integrated-coastal-sciences/, respectively. Graduate students accepted to one of these programs will be funded through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The priority deadline to apply for graduate admissions in the ECU Department of Biology is January 15, 2019. However, prospective students should also contact Rebecca Asch by email (aschr16@ecu.edu<mailto:aschr16@ecu.edu>) in advance of this deadline, with preference given to students who contact her by December 13. This email should include: (1) a brief statement describing your research interests and career goals; (2) a curriculum vitae or resume, and; (3) an unofficial academic transcript.
The Asch Lab and East Carolina University (ECU) seek to create an environment that fosters the recruitment and retention of a diverse and inclusive student body. We are working to increase diversity and access to higher education for groups underrepresented in the sciences by building an environment that welcomes, celebrates, and promotes respect for diversity.
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Dr. Rebecca G. Asch
Assistant Professor of Fisheries Biology
Sloan Foundation Research Fellow in Ocean Sciences
Pronouns: she/her/hers
East Carolina University
Department of Biology, Mail Stop 551
Howell Science Complex, Office S408
1000 East 5th Street