Doctoral Candidate

Organisation/Company Centro de Investigaciones sobre Desertificación (CIDE, CSIC-UV-GVA) Department Ecology and Global Change: functional diversity lab Research Field Biological sciences Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Positions PhD Positions Application Deadline 30 Oct 2026 - 23:59 (Europe/Brussels) Country Spain Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 35 Offer Starting Date 1 Mar 2027 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon Europe - MSCA Marie Curie Grant Agreement Number 101312530 Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No
Offer Description Response diversity describes the variation in how individuals, species, or functional groups respond toenvironmentalchangeandtheconceptisincreasinglyrecognisedasakeydriverofecosystemresilience.

Understandingandpromotingresponsediversityisthereforeessentialforconservingbiodiversityandsupportingresilientecosystemsinachangingworld.
The CIDE-CSIC, in collaboration with the University of Valencia, invites applications for a Doctoral Candidate position within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network ReDiLEEP ( ).ReDiLEEPbringstogetherleadinguniversities,researchinstitutes,andnon-academicpartnersacrossEuropeandbeyondtoadvanceresponsediversityresearchandtranslatenewknowledgeintoecosystemmanagement,restoration,andbiodiversitypolicy.
The Doctoral Candidate will contribute to this effort by investigating response diversity through the lenses of trait based ecology and temporal ecological datasets at regional and global scales in natural vegetation. The project will focus on how climatic extremes affect the capacity of response diversity to stabilize ecosystems through compensatory dynamics within and among species. To address these questions, the candidate will combine analyses of existing datasets with experimental work, ranging from simple bioassays to advanced metacommunity experiments conducted under controlled conditions.

Thepositionoffersopportunitiesforinterdisciplinaryresearch,internationalcollaboration,andexchangevisitswithpartnersacrosstheReDiLEEPconsortium,complementedbyacomprehensiveprogrammeofscientificandtransferableskillstraining.
Research Project DC8,
Disruption of compensatory dynamics under extreme climatic events. DC8 will investigate how climatic extremes disrupt compensatory dynamics and alter the stabilizing effects of response diversity in plant communities. The candidate will examine how temporal and spatial asynchrony among species, and among individuals within species, changes under increasing climatic variability and extreme events. Specifically, the project will test whether functional traits can predict changes in the degree of overlap in species performance, phenology,anddemographicresponsesunderclimaticstress,andwhethersuchchangesreducethecapacityofRDtopromoteecosystemstability.
Theprojectcombinesobservational,experimental,andmacroecologicalapproachesacrossmultiplespatialscales.

First,regionaldatasetsofplantphenologyandmulti-yearcollectionsofseedmaterialfromcontrastingclimaticconditionswillbeusedtoquantifytemporalandspatialpatternsofsynchronyandasynchronyamongpopulationsandspecies.

Second,fieldexperiments,commongardenstudies,andcontrolledgrowth-chamberexperimentswillassesshowclimaticextremesinfluencetraitvariationandresponsedynamicsamongindividualsandspecies.

Finally,thecandidatewilluseglobalvegetationtime-seriesdatafromtheLOTVSinitiative( )toevaluatehowcompensatorydynamicscontributetocommunitystabilityworldwideandtodeterminewhetherextremeclimaticeventsweakenthesestabilizingmechanismsacrossecosystems.

Byintegratingfunctionaltraitecology,long-termecologicalmonitoring,andexperimentalapproaches,theprojectwilladvanceourunderstandingofthemechanismslinkingresponsediversity,climaticextremes,andecosystemresilience.
Create a Personal Career Development Plan (PCDP) outlining research objectives, timelines, skill development goals, and career aspirations. Organize, prepare and follow up biannual meetings of the supervisory teams.
Design and conduct laboratory microcosm experiments to investigate how different environmental drivers influence species responses, community dynamics and ecosystem stability.
Analyse experimental and field data using state-of-the-art statistical approaches.
Actively communicate results to the developers of predictive models within ReDiLEEP.
Disseminate your research through publications in leading international journals and presentations at international conferences and workshops.
Participate actively in ReDiLEEP network training, secondments, dissemination, reporting, and cohort activities.
Secondments and Network Training
The position includes planned secondments at other collaborating institutes of the ReDiLEEP consoritum.
The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary cohort of doctoral researchers and benefit fro