Swedish society Oikos: PhD position at Trondheim

Hi Oikos Listan,

Please spread this vacancy for a great PhD position among your students:

PhD on effects of fungi and invertebrate herbivores on plant community ecology and evolution

We have a vacancy for a PhD candidate at the Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway, to study the effects of fungal pathogens and invertebrate herbivores on plant community assembly and evolution, as part of a globally distributed experiment. This is a fixed-term position for a period of 3 years with the possibility of a 4th year, if the candidate takes on compulsory duty work, such as teaching or other service work at the Department.

The goal is to obtain a doctoral degree in biology. The candidate will perform field experiments to study the roles of fungi and invertebrate herbivores in the ecology and evolution of plant communities along elevational gradients in the Norwegian mountains.

The working environment
The PhD candidate will join the Multiscale Biology (MsB) section of the Department of Biology. The MsB section investigates processes spanning multiple levels of biological organization, from molecules to ecosystems. The MsB section is a collaborative, vibrant, and growing research community including 8 Associate Professors and Professors, 10 PhD candidates and postdocs, and 7 engineers. Further information can be found at https://www.ntnu.edu/biology/research/multiscale

The research group and the project
The candidate will be directly supervised by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Martijn L. Vandegehuchte. The candidate will take part in an international research network, conducting a globally replicated experiment to investigate the effects of aboveground fungi and invertebrate herbivores on plant communities (BugNet: https://bug-net.org).

The candidate will work at Norwegian field sites to conduct the experiments set out by the BugNet project. In addition, the PhD candidate will have the opportunity to develop research into the roles of climate, disease, and herbivory in affecting interactions between plants and soil organisms and in plant evolutionary ecology. The field locations, in the mountains of central Norway, are ideally situated to use elevational gradients as a space-for-time substitution to study climate change effects. Dr. Anne Kempel of the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research and Prof. Dr. Eric Allan of the University of Bern, both in Switzerland, will co-supervise the PhD candidate.

More info to apply here: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/221175/phd-on-effects-of-fungi-and-invertebrate-herbivores-on-plant-community-ecology-and-evolution

My best,

Dries (in name of my former collaborator Martijn)

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