PhD in Wildflower Phenology

The Plant Ecology Group at ETH Zürich, led by Professor Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, is seeking an enthusiastic PhD candidate to study how Alpine flowering communities vary over space and time, and what the consequences of this variation are for plant-pollinator dynamics. This topic is relevant to our understanding of how climate change will alter the timing and overlap in flowering phenology of co-occurring Alpine wildflowers, and the impacts of such novel flowering communities for pollinator dynamics and plant reproductive fitness. Addressing these topics has been challenging in Alpine systems, which harbor a high diversity of plants and pollinators whose interactions vary enormously over fine spatial and short temporal scales. Fortunately, recent technological and analytical developments allow us to quantify species interaction networks at high spatial and temporal resolution, potentially providing for new insights into this topic.