The lab got a new 5-year ISF grant to study the supergene we discovered in the desert ant Cataglyphis niger. Graduate student and postdoc positions are available to join this exciting project! We have recently discovered a chromosome with a large non-recombining region (~10Mbp) that is associated with a polymorphism of the colony social structure in this species (some colonies have one queen while others have multiple queens). The candidates will join the research program that employs population genomic sequencing of many hundreds of samples from the focal species and from other closely related species. The research involves genomic sequencing (Illumina and Pacbio) and computational analyses including population genomic analyses for the inference demography, natural selection, recombination rates, and genomic mapping of traits related to social behavior and social organization, as well as phylogenomic analyses for reconstructing of the evolutionary history of this chromosome. Please contact Eyal for more information (eprivman@univ.haifa.ac.il).