PhD Position at Jacobs University in Bremen: Modeling Phytoplankton Dynamics (m/f/diverse) Job ID 19-20

-
The dynamics of phytoplankton communities are controlled by bottom-up (water physics and chemistry) and top-down (natural enemies) drivers. However, the relative importance and direction of these drivers on community compositions and relative abundances are not well established: they vary in time and space and also depend on trait-mediated physiological and ecological interactions.
The goal of this project is to quantify the relative effects of interacting drivers on phytoplankton, within taxonomic and size-based categories. The PhD student will consider physiological and ecological processes (e.g. nutrient acquisition, growth rates, and food-web interactions) and their size-scaling properties to develop theoretical models of how physical forcing, competition for resources, and grazing from specialist or generalists shape: 1) size distributions of prey and predators, 2) size-abundance and other trait-abundance relationships of phytoplankton communities, and 3) abundances of different plankton taxa and functional groups. 

The review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.

https://www.jacobs-university.de/phd-position-modeling-phytoplankton-dynamics-mfdiverse-job-id-19-20

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comment. Due to an increased number of spam comments, we have felt the need to moderate this section. Your comment will appear in up to 72h. Thank you for your understanding.

Kind regards

Young ISDR

Popular posts from this blog

Diatom of the month - December 2017: Water Quality Monitoring Challenges

-
Image
by Luca Marazzi* Although water quality monitoring programmes extensively use diatoms in North America and Europe, this is not the case (yet) in emerging and developing countries. Dalu and Froneman (2016) reviewed diatom-based monitoring in sub-Saharan Africa, concluding that (i) much more training of new experts and financial resources to buy microscopes and identification guides are required to make the most of the ecological indicator properties of these algae; (ii) a stronger focus should be placed on multidisciplinary projects to quantify diatom species tolerances and ecological requirements and (iii) the extensive taxonomic literature (see Fig. 1) needs to be made more widely available, for example online. Fig. 1. Reprints and publications on diatom ecology and taxonomy of the South African Diatom Collection at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity National Diatom Collection at North-West University, South Africa ( Source : Harding et al., 2004). ...
Read more

The role of geology behind diatom communities

-
Image
Geological setting in Finland The last glaciation, approximately 10 000 years ago, eroded and deposited material leaving behind a landscape full of glacial landforms in northern Europe. These landforms include thick layers of basal tills, glaciofluvial eskers, and moraines, to name a few. The retreating glacier also left behind a multitude of lakes in Finland. These lakes are often shallow and elongated in the direction of the ice flow. A majority of the lakes are located in central-eastern Finland, called the Finnish Lake District, where a relatively coarse-grained basal till covers most of the land surface. These tills deposited under actively flowing ice lobes that flushed away the finer materials. However, in the intersection of two actively flowing ice lobes, a passive interlobate area formed. This wedge-shaped area pierces central Finland in a NW-SE direction and is characterized by fine-grained basal till. The coastal areas of Finland, on the other hand, were under water ...
Read more