Tag Archives: field assistants

Re-posting Field Crew Advertisement

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For a variety of reasons including wanting to expand the size of our crew, we are looking for an additional one or two assistants for our rapidly approaching field season. Dates potentially a little flexible, but we really need people comfortable driving an ATV (even better if received agency training or certification). Feel free to contact me with any questions.

 

 

Anyway, here’s the revised advertisement:

FIELD ASSISTANTS (1-2) needed approximately March 3 – May 5 (dates potentially flexible) for investigations of the behavior and ecology of Greater Sage-Grouse near Lander, Wyoming and the scenic Wind River Range.  The projects are part of a larger effort in Prof. Gail Patricelli’s lab at UC Davis to understand how sexual selection shapes sage-grouse display behaviors- see the following websites for more information (http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/gpatricelli/) and (http://www.alankrakauer.org). Assistants will use video and audio recording technology to support an NSF-funded study of courtship dynamics and display plasticity on the lek. Duties include maintaining camera and acoustic monitoring equipment, observation of basic courtship behavior and lek counts, GPS surveying, habitat characterization, assisting in the capture of adult sage-grouse, data entry, and some computer and video analysis. Assistants must be flexible in their needs and comfortable living and working in close quarters in a remote field station, and able to work in adverse field conditions (mainly MUD and COLD).  Work will be daily and primarily early in the morning, with afternoon and night work required as well.  Applicants must have a valid driver’s license, basic computer skills, ATV experience (ideally with formal safety training or certification), and have succeeded in at least one field biology project in the past. Wilderness First Aid or First Responder, and prior experience spotlighting for sage-grouse, preferred but not required. Must be able to show proof of United States employment eligibility. Assistants will receive $600/mo plus room and board, but need to provide their own transportation to Lander and their own personal gear.  Please send a cover letter, resume, and contact info (email and phone) for two (2) references to: Alan Krakauer, Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, 2320 Storer Hall, Davis, CA 95616, or preferably by email to ahkrakauer [at] ucdavis.edu.  The positions will remain open until filled, and review of applications will begin immediately.

2013 Field Crew Advertisements are now posted

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I’ve started posting the job advertisement for our field crew for the 2013 sage-grouse season. We’re looking for 4-5 experienced, motivated, easy-to-live-with assistants to help with our research next season. It should be a fun year- we will hopefully have some encounternet tags to test (next-gen telemetry tags with gps and accelerometers made by our collaborator John Burt), and also likely have multi-robot behavior experiments on the docket.

I’m posting it in the “normal” places (Texas A&M Widlife Job Board, OSNA Job board, Society for Conservation Biology, and Animal Behavior Society- stay tuned for this as they are apparently having problems with their board). There’s a new forum-type board for bird jobs on the Ornithology Exchange- I may try that as well, although it looks fairly redundant with the OSNA job board (at least for our purposes- unfortunately we  can only take US citizens or legal residents and the Ornithology Exchange features a lot of international societies).

Here’s the ad!

FIELD ASSISTANTS (4-5) needed approximately March 3 – May 5 for investigations of the behavior and ecology of Greater Sage-Grouse near Lander, Wyoming and the scenic Wind River Range.  The projects are part of a larger effort in Prof. Gail Patricelli’s lab at UC Davis to understand how sexual selection and environmental acoustics shape sage-grouse display behaviors- see the following websites for more information (http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/gpatricelli/) and (http://www.alankrakauer.org). Assistants will use video and audio recording technology to support an NSF-funded study of courtship dynamics and display plasticity on the lek. Duties include maintaining camera and acoustic monitoring equipment, observation of basic courtship behavior and lek counts, GPS surveying, habitat characterization, assisting in the capture of adult sage-grouse, data entry, and some computer and video analysis. Assistants must be flexible in their needs and comfortable living and working in close quarters in a remote field station, and able to work in adverse field conditions (mainly MUD and COLD).  Work will be daily and primarily early in the morning, with afternoon and night work required as well.  Applicants must have a valid driver’s license, basic computer skills, and have participated in at least one field biology project in the past. Wilderness First Aid or First Responder, and previous experience/certification with off-road driving and/or ATV’s is preferred but not required. Must be able to show proof of United States employment eligibility. Assistants will receive a total stipend of $1200 plus room and board, but need to provide their own transportation to Lander and their own personal gear.  Please send a cover letter, resume, and contact info for two (2) references to: Alan Krakauer, Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, 2320 Storer Hall, Davis, CA 95616, or preferably by email to ahkrakauer [at] ucdavis.edu.  The positions will remain open until filled, and review of applications will begin immediately.

 

I’ve been pretty busy with teaching over the past month, but hope to have some more research-related updates soon.

Readying Chugwater

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Similar to last year’s season, Chugwater lek seems to be advanced by a few days compared with our two other focal leks (Monument and Preacher). Bird numbers have been reasonable for a few days, so we took advantage of a warm afternoon to set up our grid of stakes. Before starting the installation, I ran a few changes by Mary, our technician from last year and current Chugwater tape watcher back in Davis. She agreed on a few minor modifications from our otherwise excellently layed-out grid from 2011. First, we had tried to make one of the rows exactly straight on as viewed from the overlook hill. Straight girds make for easy observation, right? This turned out not to be the best idea, since it became extremely difficult to judge distance back-to-front on the grid. This year we slanted the middle row of stakes a little more, so they weren’t one immediately behind the other when viewed from the hill. The other two modifications involved shifting the stakes left and up-lek to try to make sure we could see the important ones better. We haven’t started taking video yet, but we hope these improvements will make reading positions easier both in the field and from the video. Always nice to learn something as we go on this project!

Grid installation day was EXTREMELY muddy- we all felt bad for our boots after that day.

We made another improvement- this time more by necessity than choice. Last year we constructed a short bridge over a gully so we could more easily carry gear up to the lek. This gully had evidently grown somewhat since last year, and our bridge barely fit (and where it did fit, it still left some quite slippery areas). Liz (on this years crew) led the effort to lengthen the bridge.

Field Techs Needed

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Our request for field interns for the 2012 grouse season is out! If interested, please send me an email.

I’ve posted it at the usual (for us) places-
Ornjobs (which is revamped with real-time postings now)
Texas A&M Wildlife Board
Society for Conservation Biology Job Board
Animal Behavior Society News.

(note that some may take a day or two to go live, so the ad is below).

FIELD ASSISTANTS (3-4) needed approximately March 3 – May 5 for investigations of the behavior and ecology of Greater Sage-Grouse near Lander, Wyoming and the scenic Wind River Range. The projects are part of a larger effort in Prof. Gail Patricelli’s lab at UC Davis to understand how sexual selection and environmental acoustics shape sage-grouse display behaviors- see the lab website for more information (http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/gpatricelli/). Assistants will use video and audio recording technology to support an NSF-funded study of courtship dynamics and display plasticity on the lek. Duties include maintaining camera and acoustic monitoring equipment, observation of basic courtship behavior and lek counts, GPS surveying, habitat characterization, assisting in the capture of adult sage-grouse, data entry, and some computer and video analysis. Assistants must be flexible in their needs and comfortable living and working in close quarters in a remote field station, and able to work in adverse field conditions (mainly MUD and COLD). Work will be daily and primarily early in the morning, with some afternoon and night work required as well. Applicants must have a valid driver’s license, basic computer skills, and have participated in at least one field biology project in the past. Wilderness First Aid or First Responder, and previous experience/certification with off-road driving and/or ATV’s is preferred but not required. Assistants will receive a total stipend of $1500 plus room and board, but need to provide their own transportation to Lander and their own personal gear. Please send a cover letter, resume, and contact info for two (2) references to: Alan Krakauer, Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, 2320 Storer Hall, Davis, CA 95616, or preferably by email to ahkrakauer [at] ucdavis.edu. The positions will remain open until filled, and review of applications will begin immediately.