Isham won the Vernon Bailey Award 2023!

Isham recently attended the Texas Society of Mammalogists Annual Meeting and presented his work: “Forest Fragments Contribute to the Maintenance of Paleotropical Bats Functional Diversity” where he won the Vernon Bailey Award for the best poster presentation in classical mammalogy at the organismal level. His work highlights that there is an increasing dissimilarity between co-existing species in forest fragments relative to those in continuous forests, a pattern that may be linked to niche expansion. Overall, forest fragments may contribute to the maintenance of functional diversity of insectivorous bat communities at the landscape level, although large tracts of forest are important for forest specialists.

Postdoctoral Researcher on Bat Microbiomes

The labs of Tigga Kingston and Caleb Phillips at Texas Tech University are seeking to fill a post-doc position as part of the National Science Foundation-supported project “Community processes structuring assembly and disassembly of bat gut-microbial communities across a gradient of habitat degradation”. This project integrates bat genetics, molecular dietary analysis, and microbiome data from forest interior insectivorous bats sampled across a habitat degradation gradient in Malaysia with the objective of quantifying processes and relationships shaping microbiome communities. As such, the successful applicant with have expertise and enthusiasm for the integration of omics data and ecology.  The position will be funded for one year with a possible second year depending on performance. The position is open to applicants wishing to relocate to Lubbock, Texas, as well as to those preferring to work remotely within the United States.  Application packages should include CV, contact information for three references, Research Statement, and three examples of the applicant’s published work.  Please submit applications to caleb.phillips@ttu.edu with the subject line “Microbiome Assembly Postdoc”.