Research Associate Rapid Adaptive Change – Subproject: The bog of eternal stench? The repeatability of evoutionary responses of bog communities to warming § 28 Subsection 3 HmbHG

Duties primarily include research. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications. They may also pursue doctoral studies outside of working duties.

Understanding the responses of organisms to environmental change is critical to managing and preserving biodiversity, especially in the light of global climate change. The aim of the project is to elucidate various mechanisms of rapid adaptive changes exemplarily in six subprojects using various biological collections of the University Hamburg and the Leibnitz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change. Our approach is taxonomically and functionally broad, spanning genomic, molecular, morphological, physiological and community level analysis in animals, plants and fungi. We will apply experimental evolution, phylogenomics, network analyses as well as utilize the rich biological collections that have been capturing diversity over the past 200 years. This PhD project is part of a research consortium that consists of six subprojects in total. Central to all projects is a data science approach to handle and analyze large and complex data. We search for skilled and motivated research associates for the following subproject:

“The bog of eternal stench? The repeatability of evolutionary responses of bog communities to warming” Phytoplankton are the microscopic organisms at the foundation of aquatic food webs and the carbon cycle. Ample research has shown that they can evolve in line with the pace of the climate crisis, but only a handful of studies considers biologically complex scenarios, such as the effect of evolving alone vs evolving in a community on the evolved phenotypes, and repeatability thereof. Here, we will use Zygnematophyceae species from the boglands around Hamburg in an experimental evolution setting, to test one, to which degree the evolution of ecologically relevant phenotypes (e.g. size and oxygen production) is modulated by the presence of other species, and two, to test in concept the repeatability of evolutionary outcomes at the phenotype and genotype level in simple and biologically complex scenarios.