Missouri Botanical Garden Job Opportunity: Postdoctoral Fellow – Design of ex situ plant collections for conservation

[Matthew Albrecht]

The Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development (CCSD) at the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) seeks to hire a full-time postdoctoral scholar to work on a project funded by Institute of Museum and Library Services to investigate strategies to conserve intraspecific variation in ex situ collections of imperiled plants. The candidate will 1) identify loci or phenotypic traits that may show signatures of local adaptation using genomic and phenotypic data that was already collected from common garden experiments with North American plant species of conservation concern, 2) design ex situ collections that optimally conserve neutral and adaptive intra-specific variation under real-life constraints (e.g., maximum number of individuals in a collection) by applying multi-objective optimization approaches (e.g., simulated annealing algorithms); 3) determine whether trade-offs exist that limit the ability to represent different forms of intra-specific variation in ex situ collections (e.g., among neutral and adaptive genotypic and phenotypic variation); 4) assist MBG scientists with coordinating grant-funded activities including mentoring of students, organizing and participating in outreach events and workshops, and presenting lectures to professional organizations, and 5) prepare and submit manuscripts for publication. The successful candidate will work closely with MBG scientists active in conservation genetics, conservation biology, ecology, and horticulture/living collections management and will also actively engage with collaborators and colleagues at MBG and in the broader St. Louis Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation community. This individual will conduct daily operations of assigned project or program without direct supervision. He/she/they will prepare scientific papers as leading author and will interact with Garden staff and other collaborators to prepare collaborative scientific papers. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will present lectures to professional organizations and broader audiences as appropriate. He/she/they may supervise graduate and undergraduate students, interns and volunteers.

The position will be based in St. Louis, where a vibrant community of ecologists, conservation practitioners, and evolutionary biologists interact through partnerships among MBG, Washington University, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Saint Louis University, plus other area institutions. The position will be seated in the CCSD, which explores and implements new, science-based approaches to the conservation and sustainable use of plant diversity. CCSD’s strategies for conservation are based on a sound, scientific understanding of the occurrence and distribution of plants. CCSD applies the knowledge of plant diversity accumulated by Missouri Botanical Garden researchers over many years, making that knowledge usable for conservation planning and decision-making. Operating under the auspices of the Garden and as part of its division of Science and Conservation, CCSD builds upon the Garden’s institutional expertise, scientific programs, influence and resources.

Candidates should have completed a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Botany, Genetics, Environmental Science, Conservation Biology, or a related field before the start date. The ideal candidate will have prior experience in several of the following: ex situ sampling techniques, plant phenotyping, quantitative genetics, multi-objective optimization, bioinformatics, statistical analysis of phenotypic or population genomic data, and spatial (e.g., landscape) analysis of phenotypic of genomic data.

For more information and to apply go here.

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