See, one thing for sure, If your team member is not in constant touch with you just report it to your supervisor/teacher or whoever assigning the task. I did my undergraduate and masters degree from US but haven't gone for PHD but we had group project. There were couple of incidents but most part of the project is the distribution of task. I don't know the nature of your project or task but for me, we gather together and divided the tasks to multiple sections and we divided each section of all of the group members. Once all of you agree then take your part and start work on it.

For me, Most of the case I work in my task on time and also work on whole part. Just gather information on other tasks too so that when its time for the submission some member come with no update and you are in trouble. So, just be ready for disaster. I had a situation at the last hour.

Good Luck. Make sure to create a separate e-mail folder and put all the communication with team on that folder. Never delete anything. Why don't you open a new e-mail address for each project? E-mail is free. You don't have to use school's address for projects.

I am just sharing my experience.

Good Luck.......