Topic: phylogenetics

Join an international Deep Time Cognition project studying the evolution of brains, intelligence and cognition. The Edinburgh team led by Stephen Brusatte contributes palaeontology and phylogenetics, using CT scans of fossils, brain reconstructions and evolutionary datasets. The postdoctoral researcher will gather and synthesise tetrapod brain-endocast anatomy across more than 350 million years, analyse trends in brain size with Bayesian and phylogenetic methods, relate brain size to neuron counts in living species, and estimate counts in extinct taxa. The role collaborates with Lawrence Witme

Octopuses are an emerging model organism in neurobiology due to their unique nervous system and capacity for intelligence. However, due to this novelty, nothing is currently known about many of their receptors, including those involved in neuromodulation. Given the historical significance of dopamine action in the brain and our recent findings implicating it as one of the three main neurotransmitters used in the optic lobe, we have chosen to explore dopaminergic GPCRs in Octopus vulgaris. We have identified approximately twenty candidate octopus monoamine GPCRs, utilising protein sequence simi