A 3 years (30 h) PhD position on studying the accumulation of alien species across scales is available at the Division of BioInvasions, Macroecology & Global Change, starting 1st December 2023.
The successful candidate will lead a project to study which factors are responsible for the discrepancy between the ongoing and strong accumulation of alien species in regional species pools, and the fact that only a low proportion of local communities are invaded. The following questions are going to be addressed:
- Was regional accumulation of alien species over the last century paralleled by a concomitant accumulation of aliens in local communities?
- Are alien species with longer residence times in the regional species pool distributed across (a) more local communities of the same type and (b) more local communities of different types?
- Are there any signs of saturation in the accumulation of species in local communities, or to the contrary, do we see signs of acceleration (e.g. as a result of higher propagule pressure and / or environmental changes)?
- The candidate will develop, for selected regions and taxonomic groups, a computer model that selects species from the regional species pool into local communities, depending on residence time and native: alien ratio in the regional species pool, parameterize the model, and use it to (a) quantify lag times, (b) analyse differences in lag times among community types, and (c) make projections of the future progress of accumulation of alien species in local communities using different scenarios of future biological invasions.
Check out the offer here: https://jobs.univie.ac.at/job/University-assistant-predoctoral/1003741301/
