PhD Studentship in Community Ecology, University of Zurich Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies University of Zürich
Biodiversity faces many threats. Two of particular importance are reductions in the amount of suitable habitat and changes in environmental conditions. Predicting the consequences of these joint threats to biodiversity requires an understanding of effects across multiple levels of ecological organisation: individual, population, community, and ecosystem. Also required is an understanding of how effects at one level of organisation create knock-on effects at other levels of organisation. For example, how changes in individual behaviour translate into a change in population dynamics. Experiments with small laboratory-based aquatic communities provide an excellent tool with which to study effects of habitat availability and environmental change across levels of ecological organisation. Such communities allow long-term experiments with carefully constructed communities, containing few to many species, short to long food chains, and low to high trophic diversity. Long-term experiments (many generations of the dominant organisms) can be carried out during quite short experiments, and observations can be made across levels of ecological organisation. Mathematical models can be used to link observations across levels of organisation. The project will give the successful applicant an opportunity to perform unique experimental investigations that will advance knowledge about joint effects of habitat size and environmental change. The PhD will be jointly supervised by Prof. Owen Petchey and Dr. Dennis Hansen, and will be held in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. Funding is available for at least three years. Applicants must have a Masters Level Degree in Ecology or a closely related subject, and are asked to provide a CV, including the names and contact details of three academic referees, and a one page research proposal based on the general project description and relevant published literature. Informal enquiries should be made to [email protected] or [email protected]. Applications should be emailed as a single pdf-file directly to Owen Petchey before January 31st 2011. For more information The University of Zürich: www.uzh.ch Life Sciences Zürich Graduate School: www.lszgs.ch Faculty of Science: www.mnf.uzh.ch/forschung/institute-der-mnf.html Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies: www.ieu.uzh.ch Petchey Group (Sheffield address… will change to Zürich soon): owenpetchey.staff.shef.ac.uk Dennis Hansen: plant-animal.org
