Stillingstittel:
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Food Web Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics (Ref. 2016/9758)

Stillingsbeskrivelse:
The University of Oslo is Norway’s largest institution of research and education with 28 000 students and 7000 employees. Its broad range of academic disciplines and internationally esteemed research communities make UiO an important contributor to society.

A three year position as postdoctoral research fellow available available at Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences.

Within the framework of the position duties may be assigned. The position is available from January 2017. No one can be appointed for more than one fixed-term period at the same institution.

The Postdoctoral fellow will be part a large-scale international project (Size-dependent anthropogenic perturbations – from genes to ecosystems and back) financed by the Norwegian Research Council in which we will explore eco-evolutionary feedback loops induced by size-dependent selection in the medaka Oryzias latipes.

The position will be affiliated to CEES (www.cees.uio.no), a national centre of excellence (CoE), situated at the Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo. The appointment is for a period of three years, including a period with experiments in Paris, France. The successful candidate will integrate an outstanding international research consortium gathering ecologists, molecular physiologists, bioinformaticians and geneticists in Norway and France: the Weltzien lab at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, the Institute for Ecology and Environmental Sciences of Paris at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, and the Laboratory for Evolution, Genomes, Behaviour and Ecology of CNRS in Gif sur Yvette.

Project description

Anthropogenic perturbations are disproportionately impacting large-sized species and individuals at the top of food webs, and result in cascading effects in ecosystems. These trophic cascades are caused not only by a decrease in top-predator densities, but also by an adaptive change towards smaller body sizes in top predators. Whether and how anthropogenic trophic cascades induce a change in the natural selection that acts back on body size (i.e., an eco-evolutionary feedback loop) remains largely unknown. The goal of the 3-year postdoc project is to experimentally explore whether and how such eco-evolutionary feedback loops operate in medaka and pond food webs.

Specifically, we will measure the cascading effects of fast- and slow-growth medaka lines in outdoor tank ecosystems under both bottom-up (enrichment) and top-down (presence/absence of medaka predators) perturbations, and whether and how natural selection acting back on medaka body size is different among the selected medaka lines and perturbation types. The postdoc will (i) contribute to designing the protocols, (ii) supervise the experiments including sampling the different ecosystem compartments and medaka fitness metrics, enumerate invertebrate samples, and (iii) analyse and model the data.

Qualifications:

The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences has a strategic ambition of being a leading research faculty. Candidates for these fellowships will be selected in accordance with this, and expected to be in the upper segment of their class with respect to academic credentials.

Applicants must hold a PhD-degree (or other corresponding education equivalent to a Norwegian doctoral degree) and document solid experience in ecology and evolution. The candidate will work in close collaboration with the rest of the project team and it is expected that the candidate will stay for about 6 mont

Minstelønn: 0

Maksimal lønn: 0

Arbeidsgiver Navn: Universitetet i Oslo, CEES, Department o

Arbeidsgiver adresse: 0313 OSLO

Job kort beskrivelse: University and higher education teachers

Land: Norge

Region: Oslo

Kilde til jobbtilbud: NAV, Offentlige arbeidsformidlinger, Norge

Hvordan søke: Annet - se fritekst

Lønn valuta: NOK

Lønn periode: Pr. år