Postdoc in modelling pollination services

Do you have strong quantitative, statistical or modelling skills? Interested in answering ecological questions?

We are seeking to appoint a motivated and enthusiastic postdoctoral researcher to develop ecological models to investigate how bee pollinating activity can be affected by weather and pesticide use. Bees are a key group of pollinators that contribute to production of 75% of world crops, but the sustainable provision of these services are increasingly under threat. While much research has focussed on the causes of bee decline, less has focussed on how drivers of bee decline could change bee behaviour with knock on consequences for pollination service delivery. The 4 year SFI funded SUSPOLL project aims to investigate how two main drivers of bee decline, pesticide use and climate change, may affect bee activity and pollination services (https://suspoll.ucd.ie/).
This postdoc position will be based within the SUSPOLL project. They will help in the design of data collection and drive the novel analysis of the project's data on how weather and pesticide use are associated with bee activity. They will make predictions about future pollination services based on global change scenarios using models fitted to data from the SUSPOLL project. This modelling could involve developing a new mechanistic model of pollinator activity, building on existing individual based models such as http://beehave-model.net/, or use other methods as appropriate. We hope the postdoc can drive their own research agenda within this framework, and will have lots of scope to develop their own ideas. The postdoc would be based between the research groups of Dr Dara Stanley (www.stanleyecologylab.org) and Dr Jon Yearsley (http://www.ucd.ie/ecomodel/) at UCD.

For more information and to apply search for job 012105 on https://www.ucd.ie/workatucd/jobs/