Junior Post-Doc position

The Azorean Biodiversity Group has an open Junior Post-Doc position (Ph.D defended after 2014) for the project “Developing integrative biodiversity assessments to monitor global change impacts on biodiversity”, coordinated by Paulo A. V. Borges.

Global conservation targets are needed to halt biodiversity loss by 2020 (UN Convention on Biological diversity, CBD, Aichi Target 12; UN Sustainable Development Goal 15), but existing indicators of global biodiversity (Living Planet Index, Red List Index, GEOBON-Species Protection Index) are limited by data availability. It is therefore crucial to both streamline and strengthen resources that will facilitate additional IUCN Red List assessments, to collect more data, and to make the existing information available as efficiently as possible (UN CBD Aichi Target 19).

The general aims of this project are:

i) Follow-up long-term biodiversity monitoring using a multiple-taxa approach;

ii) Identify spatially explicit information on threats to biodiversity at different scales;

iii) Use an artificial intelligence (AI) framework for Big Data to develop sound indicators of change. Specifically, we will use key native habitats from Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot and Macaronesian islands, to address the relative roles of spatial, historical and ecological processes driving taxonomic (TD), functional (FD) and phylogenetic (PD) diversity patterns; and the utility of TD and FD metrics to track effects of global change and quantify ecosystem services.

1. General requirements for admission to call are:

- Doctoral degree in areas related to Biological Sciences and more specifically on Quantitative Ecology, Macroecology, and related areas.

- A good list of publications in the areas of Macroecology, with preference to Spatial Ecology and Functional Ecology.

- Experience in the topic of biogeographical theory, in particular linking species distributions to their abiotic and biotic niches at multiple scales.

- Experience in assessing responses of different biodiversity facets to current and future climatic conditions.

- Experience in developing research analyses with large ecological and environmental datasets.

- Experience in one or more scripting language for data manipulation (e.g., R, Python).

- Excellent English communication skills (both verbal and written).

 The candidates present their applications and supporting documents, addressed to the President of the Jury at the email address paulo.av.borges@uac.pt with knowledge to fgf@uac.pt , until the last day of the competition opening deadline, which shall be October 22 to November 30, 2020.