Doctoral Candidate

Organisation/Company Université de Namur Department Biology Research Field Biological sciences Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Positions PhD Positions Application Deadline 15 Sep 2026 - 23:59 (Europe/Brussels) Country Belgium Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 38 Offer Starting Date 1 Mar 2027 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon Europe - MSCA Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

Response diversity describes the variation in how individuals, species, or functional groups respond to environmental change and the concept is increasingly recognised as a key driver of ecosystem resilience. Understanding and promoting response diversity is therefore essential for conserving biodiversity and supporting resilient ecosystems in a changing world.

The University of Namur invites applications for a Doctoral Candidate position within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network ReDiLEEP. ReDiLEEP brings together leading universities, research institutes, and non-academic partners across Europe and beyond to advance response diversity research and translate new knowledge into ecosystem management, restoration, and biodiversity policy.

This specific doctoral project aims to experimentally investigate if response diversity and mean response can predict effects of global change on coexistence and temporal stability.

Predicting how ecological communities respond to environmental change is challenging because different environmental drivers are often studied separately. Yet it is possible that the ecological impact of a disturbance depends less on the identity of the driver than on how species respond to it. DC7 will test this hypothesis by investigating whether two simple characteristics of species responses—mean response and response diversity—can consistently predict community-level outcomes across different environmental contexts.

Using high-throughput laboratory microcosm experiments with algae and heterotrophic protists, you will quantify species responses to multiple environmental drivers, including temperature change, nutrient enrichment and biomass extraction, and determine whether these measurements predict the effects of both sustained (press) and short-term (pulse) disturbances on species coexistence and temporal stability. By combining controlled experiments with statistical analyses and close interaction with the theoretical work developed in DC6, the project will provide one of the first rigorous tests of whether response diversity offers a general, predictive understanding of how environmental change shapes ecological communities.

• Design and conduct laboratory microcosm experiments to investigate how different environmental drivers influence species responses, community dynamics and ecosystem stability.
• Analyse experimental data using state-of-the-art statistical approaches.
• Actively communicate results to the developers of predictive models within ReDiLEEP.
• Disseminate your research through publications in leading international journals and presentations at international conferences and workshops.
• Participate actively in ReDiLEEP network training, secondments, dissemination, reporting, and cohort activities.

The position includes 6 months of planned secondments at the University of Zürich.

The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary cohort of doctoral researchers and benefit from ReDiLEEP training in response diversity methods, data management, reproducible code, R/Tidyverse, machine learning and AI for ecologists, visualisation, evidence-based policymaking, science-policy communication, and policy brief writing.

Requirements

Research Field Biological sciences Education Level Master Degree or equivalent

Skills/Qualifications

• Master's degree in Ecology, Microbiology, Environmental Sciences, or related disciplines.
• A strong interest in community ecology, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
• Experience with ecological experiments and/or quantitative data analysis
• Strong data analysis skills (preferably in R).

MSCA Eligibility Criteria

Applicants must meet the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network eligibility requirements at the recruitment date:

• Mobility rule: applicants must not have resided or carried out their main activity, such as work or studies, in Belgium for more than 12 months during the 36 months preceding the recruitment date.
• Applicants must not already hold a doctoral degree.
• Applicants must be doctoral candidates and be enrolled, or eligible to be enrolled, in a doctoral programme at the University of Namur.
• Applicants must work full-time a