PhD position in genomics of Arctic alien plants at NTNU University Museum,
Trondheim, Norway. Start date spring 2024, fully funded for 4 years.

Extended deadline:
April1st2024

Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Kristine Bakke Westergaard (main)

Dr. Simone Fior, ETH Zürich, Switzerland (co)

Professor Mike Martin (co)

Please find all details and link to apply here:

https://www.jobbnorge.no/ledige-stillinger/stilling/255087

About the project:
We are seeking a highly qualified, ambitious, and motivated PhD candidate
for a project focusing on genomics of Arctic alien plants. The project
will focus on target alien plant species and seek to uncover their
genomic basis of adaptation to the Arctic environment and how it relates
to their invasiveness.

A warming climate, changes in soil properties, and rising human activity
in the Arctic increase the probability of introduction and establishment
of alien plant species. In high-Arctic Svalbard and other Arctic regions,
the wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris) is an established and naturalised
alien species. Hypotheses for its success include multiple introductions
from different genetic sources, enemy release advantage related to plant
defense compounds, and shifts in adaptive traits. The Phd project will
develop genomic datasets, making use of field collections and herbarium
resources, and develop experimental evidence to examine links between the
genomic basis of successful establishment and potential invasiveness in
the high-Arctic. The wintercress will be a primary focus of the project,
but complementary research on parallel systems may be developed. The
project will add an important evolutionary component to ongoing
interdisciplinary research on Arctic greening.

The work of the PhD candidate will consist of arctic field work, herbarium
work, green house experimental work, DNA lab and bioinformatics in an
international interdisciplinary team.  More specifically, the successful
candidate will:

Manage and supervise third-party services to achieve high-quality
reference genomes suitable for population genomic analyses Assemble a
spatial and temporal sampling of herbarium and fresh specimens Produce NGS
libraries and sequencing data using clean-lab facilities and third-party
services Analyse sequencing data combined with available genomic resources
and complementary experimental evidence to unravel the evolutionary
history of parallel Arctic invasions, including the phylogeography of
established populations, the genetic architecture of adaptation to the
Arctic environment, and the role of different chemotypes in the context
of the enemy release hypothesis Analyse temporal data to assess turnover
of allele frequencies following introduction and bottlenecks Design and
perform common garden experiments to test the adaptive role of shifts
in enemy pressure, breeding system and life-history traits underlying
invasiveness under current and future climate Disseminate results in
scientific literature, to relevant stakeholders and the public

The candidate will use the NTNU University Museum's herbarium,
genomics laboratory facilities and computational resources, and the
work will be closely associated with a project on Arctic greening
(https://geobiology.ethz.ch/research/arctic-greening.html) based at
ETH Zürich. The work will also be part of the newly established Nordic
Borealization Network that seeks to understand the processes, drivers, and
consequences of changes in the species composition of tundra ecosystems.

As a PhD candidate you are normally paid from gross NOK 532 200 per
annum before tax, depending on qualifications and seniority. From the
salary, 2% is deducted as a contribution to the Norwegian Public Service
Pension Fund.

The position is available from spring 2024. The period of employment is
four years, with 25% of the time allocated to collection work, teaching
and public outreach.

Please feel free to reach out with any enquires -

kristine.b.westergaard@ntnu.no.

Kristine Bakke Westergaard <kristine.b.westergaard@ntnu.no>

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