Postdoc Position: Wildlife Ecology

Biodiversity is declining worldwide and governmental bodies must meet their responsibility of conserving, improving and managing the livelihoods of individuals and species as well as ecosystem function. HABITRACK is a project that aims to provide crucial knowledge for supporting decision-making of the European Union, namely for the conservation of breeding, migration and wintering habitats for huntable birds with non-secure conservation status in Europe.

Within the HABITRACK project, the Department of Ecology is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to support the analysis of waterfowl movement data to generate basic understanding and insight for conservation guidance. As a postdoctoral researcher you will contribute directly to improving habitat management and restoration recommendations for declining bird species in Europe.

Your research will focus on answering two main questions:

1. Which habitats and niches do migratory waterfowl (Northern pintails, Eurasian wigeons, Garganeys, Taiga Bean geese) prefer for foraging and resting during the time of the year that they reside in the European Union?
2. How does the spring migration stopover behaviour of the studied species relate to breeding success in the Arctic?

In order to answer these questions, you will clean and explore a multitude of collected GPS tracking data, link them to remotely sensed environmental data and statistically model relevant ecological processes. You will also be partly responsible for the management of the tracking data sets collected by the HABITRACK team.

You will publish your findings in international scientific journals and disseminate them to colleagues, policy-makers and other stakeholders. Furthermore, as the data is collected by different people and institutions, you will join regular project meetings and exchange knowledge and information with other postdoctoral researchers and PhD students working at the different partner institutions.

Requirements:

• You are enthusiastic about fundamental research as well as applied research.
• You hold a recent PhD degree in biology, ecology, environmental science, applied data science or another field related to the project topic and have a good track record of scientific publications.
• Preferably you have knowledge of bird ecology, movement ecology, the analysis of tracking data or spatial analysis.
• You have experience with ecological data collection, are familiar with data analysis and statistics, and enjoy programming in R or Python.
• You have a good command of spoken and written English at C1 level.
• You like collaborating with other people in a cross-disciplinary and international setting.

Salary Benefits:

• We will give you a temporary employment contract of 22 months.
• Your salary within salary scale 10 depends on your previous education and number of years of (relevant) work experience. The amounts in the scale are based on a 38-hour working week.
• You will receive an 8% holiday allowance and an 8,3% end-of-year bonus.
• We offer Dual Career Coaching. The Dual Career Coaching assists your partner via support, tools, and resources to improve their chances of independently finding employment in the Netherlands.
• You will receive extra days off. With full-time employment, you can choose between 30 or 41 days of annual leave instead of the statutory 20.

Work and science require good employment practices. This is reflected in Radboud University's primary and secondary employment conditions. You can make arrangements for the best possible work-life balance with flexible working hours, various leave arrangements and working from home. You are also able to compose part of your employment conditions yourself, for example, exchange income for extra leave days and receive a reimbursement for your sports subscription. And of course, we offer a good pension plan. You are given plenty of room and responsibility to develop your talents and realise your ambitions. Therefore, we provide various training and development schemes.

30.4 - 38 hours per week

Houtlaan 4