*Postdoctoral associate in marine plankton ecology*
We are seeking a postdoctoral associate to participate as a member of a
larger team in analyzing food web interactions and stability of marine
plankton communities. The postdoc’s primary responsibilities will
include the assembly and analysis of existing marine plankton data sets,
and working to refine multivariate autoregressive (MAR) models in
several new ways that will increase the applicability of MARs to data
from a variety of ecosystems. MAR modeling has been used extensively to
(1) identify the strength of intra- and inter-species interactions
within freshwater plankton communities, (2) evaluate the effects of
environmental drivers, and (3) assess community stability. The project
as a whole will address four technical barriers that hinder widespread
application of the MAR framework to marine data sets – observation
error, lower temporal autocorrelaton due to open systems and infrequent
sampling, multiple spatially-distributed sampling locations, and
uncertainty introduced by unmeasured species or environmental drivers.
Candidates for this position should have (or expect to soon have) a
Ph.D. in Ecology, Marine Biology, Statistics or a related field, a
record of peer-reviewed publication, a strong background in marine
plankton ecology and experience with statistical modeling of large data
sets. Applicants with interest in marine plankton community response to
climate change and environmental disturbance are particularly encouraged
to apply. Experience with programming in R would be ideal, but those
without this experience should feel free to contact us to determine
their fit to this position; colleagues at NOAA Fisheries in Seattle are
directly engaged in most of the novel programming work to be done in
this project, and will interact extensively with the postdoc to help
apply the models to ecological questions using marine plankton data.
The postdoc will be based at the National Center for Ecological Analysis
& Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
working directly with Dr. Stephanie Hampton (NCEAS) and Dr. Steve Katz
(Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary) and in collaboration with
quantitative ecologists at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NOAA
Fisheries) in Seattle. We anticipate that the postdoc will be in
residence at NCEAS beginning sometime between September and December
2009, with the yearly appointment renewable up to two years. If
interested, please attach a C.V. to an email expressing your interest in
this position, with names and contact information for 3 references to
hamp...@nceas.ucsb.edu <mailto:hamp...@nceas.ucsb.edu>.
--
Stephanie E. Hampton
Deputy Director
National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis
University of California, Santa Barbara
735 State St., Suite 300
Santa Barbara, CA 93101-3351, USA
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu
hamp...@nceas.ucsb.edu
Tel (805) 892-2505
Fax (805) 892-2510
