Understanding trophic processes in the lead up to and at release of captively bred threatened freshwater fishes

We are seeking two PhD candidates for these exciting freshwater fish projects.

There are two PhD positions available. The first will focus on fingerling behaviour and survival. The second will focus on basal resources for juvenile fish at proposed release sites in the northern rivers. The successful applicants will be working with the Aquatic Ecology Lab at UNE and the NSW DPI Fisheries team at Grafton. The Aquatic Lab is a multidisciplinary team of 10 scientists who work on the ecological outcomes of environmental flows in the northern Murray Darling Basin. Other research projects are in the northern rivers of NSW, focused on catchment-scale drivers of poor water quality and the health of aquatic ecosystems. This project is jointly supervised by UNE and NSW DPI Fisheries.

The scholarship is tenable for three years and six months (3.5) full-time for a doctoral degree. The duration of an RTP stipend scholarship cannot be extended.

Trophic processes are an important and understudied aspect of threatened fish recovery. One of the primary levers for recovering threatened freshwater fishes is restocking (and translocation) and studies reveal that conditioning can prove advantageous including in negating predator effects following fish reintroductions. We propose experimentally testing the immediate success of releasing fishes (e.g. eastern freshwater cod, purple-spotted gudgeons, Oxleyan pygmy perch) that have been subject to different feeding regimes under hatchery conditions (e.g. live food v. pellets, pond v. aquaria raised) and hard v soft release using underwater video networks. The primary focus is on quantifying immediate predator effects on the behaviour and survival of small and large fingerlings in wild and simulated wild environments (e.g. hatchery pond). A complementary focus will be on monitoring and forecasting optimum trophic conditions for releases. This will involve monitoring functional prey groups at potential release sites. Ultimately, the intention is to aid hatchery conditioning opportunities and to inform release strategy for threatened fishes.

The Aquatic Ecology Lab is based in the School of Environmental and Rural Science (ERS). ERS is a research-intensive School that attracts external and internal competitive funding to support research at the leading edge of ecological and agricultural research, nationally and internationally. The School comprises seven disciplines including agronomy and soil science, animal science, botany, genetics, earth sciences, ecosystem management and zoology.

The Research Training Program (RTP) Domestic Scholarship is valued at $36,862 per annum (2025 rate) tax-free and paid in fortnightly installments.