The National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) in Lyon is hiring a permanent researcher to study aquatic community ecology under global change.

Please see below for the official job description:

“The RiverLy research unit combines hydrology, hydraulics, ecology, ecotoxicology and environmental chemistry to understand the ecological functioning and dynamics of river networks and guide their management. More specifically, the EcoFlowS team explores multi-scale eco-hydrology to understand and quantify ecological responses (eg. populations, communities, ecological processes) to different habitat proximal variables (eg. hydrology, hydraulics, sediments, temperature, dissolved oxygen, contaminants), natural or under human influences. This knowledge is used to support the management of river networks, including their biomonitoring and restoration.

In the EcoFlowS team, you will model community responses (including taxonomic, functional or molecular approaches) to global change to develop innovative strategies to manage and protect river networks. In line with the scientific project of RiverLY, your research will integrate the local-scale effects of habitat drivers identified through mechanistic approaches into large-scale (from regional to international) models of biodiversity and ecosystem responses to environmental stressors associated with global change. You will test theoretical hypotheses from community ecology integrating the most recent conceptual (e.g., metacommunity theory, spatial ecology) and methodological (e.g., spatial statistical modelling, process-based models of dispersal) developments. You will quantify resistance and resilience capacities of aquatic communities to global change, accounting for the dendritic nature of river networks and their natural (e.g., drying) and anthropogenic (e.g., dams) fragmentation. To do so, you could use existing regional (e.g., LTER platforms, Water Agencies), national (e.g., French Biodiversity Office) and international (e.g., open-access databases) datasets, as well as the rich datasets available at EcoFlowS (e.g., Rhone river restoration monitoring, intermittent rivers database, glacial streams).

In RiverLY, your research will interact with other disciplines from the different research teams to integrate the ecological effects of various physical and chemical environmental factors. Thanks to this multidisciplinary context, you will lead projects to conserve, restore and manage riverine biodiversity under global change in line with national and EU legislations. Last, you will contribute to animating, programming and evaluating research within local research groups, as well as developing regional, national and international collaborations.

Holding a PhD in aquatic ecology, you have a strong international postdoctoral experience in modelling biological community responses to global change. During your career, you combined taxonomic, functional and/or molecular approaches from catchment to national or international scales, preferably on aquatic macro-invertebrates, but open to other biological groups such as fish. You are skilled in statistical modelling and data mining, you like working in a very collaborative and multi-disciplinary environment. You show excellent oral and written communication skills and have demonstrated leadership abilities in multidisciplinary and highly visible projects. You are fluent in English and must hold a long-time international experience abroad.”

For more details, please contact Thibault Datry (thibault.datry@inrae.fr).