Background: Extensive research across animal taxa has shown that early-life adversity can affect individuals’ health, fertility and longevity in the long term. Such negative impacts can be amplified when individuals encounter multiple stressors during early life, as seen in past studies on cumulative adversity effects. It is interesting to examine such cumulative effects from the viewpoint of early-life advantages, i.e., cumulative silver spoon effects. Understanding these effects is interesting and important because (a) the positive effects of cumulative silver spoons may not be the exact opposite of the negative effects of cumulative adversities, due to potentially distinct non-linear effects, and thus (b) a more holistic population-level understanding can be gained since individuals differ in early-life experiences.
This Masters project will examine such interesting effects of cumulative silver spoons on fitness proxies such as lifespan and reproductive success in long-lived mammals, using either humans or elephants as the study system, depending on the candidate’s interests.
Internship: This project will take place at the University of Turku, Finland, in Prof Virpi Lummaa’s lab. The candidate will be supervised by Dr Hansraj Gautam, Dr. Axelle Delaunay and Dr. Nikolaos Smit. The Lummaa Lab works with extensive longitudinal datasets on the life records of both humans and Asian elephants (https://lummaalab.utu.fi/research-themes/).
What you will learn/gain: With this internship, the candidate will a) learn how to scientifically address an exciting research question, b) learn analysing large demographic datasets, and c) gain exposure to a highly international group of researchers working on a range of exciting questions in evolutionary biology, ecology and other topics.
Preferable start: Beginning of 2026 (dates are flexible).
Note: There is no financial help provided but we’ll support candidates in application for Erasmus/other mobility grants (check modalities with your university).
Requirements: We are looking for a motivated Master’s students interested in evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology and who is willing to learn more about early-life effects in long-lived social mammals. This project would require knowledge of statistical analyses and previous experience with R software, since this project contains a substantial part of analyses on R. Please send a CV and a cover letter summarizing your background, interests and motivation for this project (1 page max) by November 26th 2025.
Interviews will be held the following weeks.
Contact: Dr Hansraj Gautam hansraj.gautam@utu.fi , Dr. Nikolaos Smit nikolaos.smit@utu.fi and Dr. Axelle Delaunay axelle.delaunay@utu.fi, Department of Biology, University of Turku, Finland.
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