PhD niche modelling of Arctic gelatinous zooplankton

The Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) is a member of the Helmholtz Association (HGF) and funded by federal and state government. AWI focuses on polar and marine research in a variety of disciplines such as biology, oceanography, geology, geochemistry and geophysics thus allowing multidisciplinary approaches to scientific goals.

PhD Position "niche modelling of Arctic gelatinous zooplankton" (m/f/d)

Background

This position, starting 01.05.2020, or as soon as possible thereafter, is part of the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group “ARJEL - Arctic Jellies”, investigating the impact of gelatinous zooplankton communities on changing Arctic ecosystems. ARJEL will use state-of-the-art methods, including “OMICs”, optical and acoustic field surveys and species distribution modelling, to characterize the distribution, diversity, trophic role and adaptive potential of gelatinous zooplankton in the changing Arctic ecosystem. It will implement these data in food web and mechanistic niche models to forecast corresponding ecosystem changes in space and time and their implications for food web structure and ecosystem functioning and services including commercially important fish stocks.

You will work with empirical and modelling data on Arctic gelatinous zooplankton to investigate how particular oceanographic features shape their distributions and how their distributions overlap with those of major fish stocks in the Arctic seas.

You will
(i) apply environmental niche modelling to understand regional patterns of abundances and diversity and identify their environmental predictors,
(ii) elucidate small-scale distribution patterns of distribution and abundances with an interdisciplinary field approach, combining net catches and optical field surveys,

(iii) couple Species Distribution Models of gelatinous zooplankton species with data on fish species in order to determine potential species interactions.

Tasks

You will

• carry out a literature survey on Arctic gelatinous zooplankton distributions
• compile environmental and distributional data from different sources and test various environmental predictors influencing gelatinous species distributions
• apply multivariate Species Distribution Models (such as GLM, GAM, RF, etc) to gelatinous zooplankton including model evaluation and model based analysis of ecological characteristics such as biogeographical patterns and niche dimension
• couple of process-oriented numerical models to statistical species distribution models with data on fish species to detect overlap of realized niches and potential species interactions
• participate in an Arctic expedition on board a research vessel to collect distributional datasets and gelatinous zooplankton samples.
• present your work at national and international meetings and write up the results for peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Requirements

• Master degree (or equivalent) in Biological sciences or related fields
• expertise with processing of multi-disciplinary and heterogeneous data from data bases, data portals, including visualisation, data management, data archiving and data standards
• a strong background in computational biology and programming, i.e. GIS, R, or Python and a willingness to learn similar tools
• strong team player and cooperation skills
• strong English communication skills, both verbally and in writing

Additional skills and knowledge

:

• experience in Species Distribution Modelling approaches and/or network analyses
• expertise with marine field work is considered advantageous
• knowledge in (gelatinous) zooplankton ecology and taxonomy is also of merit but not required

Further Information

For further information please contact
Dr. Charlotte Havermans
(charlotte.havermans@awi.de, +49(471)4831-1530).
This position is limited to 3 years. The salary will be paid in accordance with the Collective Agreement for the Public Service of the Federation (Tarifvertrag des öffentlichen Dienstes, TVöD Bund), up to salary level

13 (66%
).
The place of employment will be
Bremerhaven.
All doctoral candidates will be members of AWI’s postgraduate program
and thus benefit from a comprehensive training program and extensive support measures. Postdocs can register with AWI’s postdoc office
, thereby gaining access to a set of tailor made career development tools.

This characterizes us

• our scientific success - excellent research.
• collaboration and cooperation - intra-institute, national and international, interdisciplinary.
• opportunities to develop – on the job, aiming at other positions and beyond AWI.
• a culture of reconciling work and family – audited, and even more than that.
• our outstanding research infrastructure – ships, stations, aircraft, laboratories and more.
• an international environment – everyday contacts with people from all over the world.
• having an influence – fundamental research with social and political relevance
• flat hierarchies – freedom and responsibility.
• exciting topics – also in technology, administration and infrastructure.

Equal opportunities are an integral part of our personnel policy and we encourage women to apply.
Disabled applicants will be given preference when equal qualifications are present. The AWI fosters the compatibility of work and family through various means. Because of our engagement in the area of work-life compatibility we have been awarded the certificate “Career and Family”.

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