Crustacean Ethologist — Behavioral Assays for Shrimp Health and Welfare

Job Details

Location: Remote with occasional travel

Compensation: $60K USD + (negotiable - commensurate with experience and time commitment)

Commitment: Full-time ideal, but we are open to discussing other options for strong candidates

Timeline: Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis, so please apply ASAP

About the Role

We partner with large-scale commercial programs to breed shrimp with improved health and welfare. We’re looking for a scientist who can turn health and welfare goals into practical, measurable phenotypes in shrimp.

This includes designing challenge tests, behavioral assays (like conditioned place preference tests), and physiological measures to assess both health and affective states like fear or pain.

When appropriate, precision aquatic farming tools (like sensors or video tracking) will be used to collect relevant data. 

You will liaise with industry and academic partners to develop these assays and measures for application in an industry context. 

Key Responsibilities

• Design and validate behavioral and physiological assays that reflect health- and welfare-relevant traits (e.g. stress resilience, nociception, activity recovery).
   
• Create challenge tests or structured protocols that can be used in real-world breeding settings.
   
• Evaluate the feasibility and implementation of precision aquatic farming systems – including video, acoustic, and biometric sensors.
   
• Define standard operating procedures for consistent phenotyping across breeding environments.
   
• Discuss breeding strategies and choices with industry partners.
   
• Conditional on the project, publish high-quality research articles in peer-reviewed journals and present findings at conferences and workshops.
   
• Track and integrate research on affective biomarkers in shrimp.
   
• Occasionally assist with the screening of prospective teammates

Requirements

Note, these are ideal. Even if you do not meet all the criteria, we encourage you to apply if you believe you could excel in this role.

Key criteria

• MSc or PhD in animal welfare science, ethology, aquatic physiology, a related discipline, or equivalent experience.
   
• Experience developing and validating behavioral assays, ideally for aquatic species.
   
• Ability to design and validate behavioral or physiological assays in shrimp as part of an effective breeding protocol.

Preferred

• Track record of conducting and publishing original and relevant research.
   
• Experience successfully collaborating with commercial breeding companies.
   
• Familiarity with the neurobiology of nociception and stress, affective behavior, social behavior, and welfare monitoring in shrimp.
   
• Knowledge of key threats to health and welfare (e.g.white spot syndrome virus, water quality).
   
• Exposure to or experience with precision aquatic farming tools (video, acoustic, biometric, and environmental sensors) and automated scoring/ML pipelines.

Contact Information