About this role
Are you interested in the impacts of agricultural land use on microbial communities? Do you want to understand the effects of pesticides and nutrients on carbon cycling in aquatic ecosystems? The Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate to investigate agrochemical impacts on microbial carbon cycling in lowland agricultural drainage ditch sediments. /static/uploads/206 hippo jp g employees meeting sblanchard 2023 lr (2).jpg Are you interested in the impacts of agricultural land use on microbial communities? Do you want to understand the effects of pesticides and nutrients on carbon cycling in aquatic ecosystems? The Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate to investigate agrochemical impacts on microbial carbon cycling in lowland agricultural drainage ditch sediments. Agricultural land use strongly alters the functioning and biodiversity of the surrounding landscape. Conventional practices rely heavily on chemical inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides, which readily make their way into adjacent waterways. Yet how these agrochemicals affect aquatic microbial communities and their functioning remains poorly understood. This is a pressing research priority, since the Netherlands has approximately 300,000 km of drainage ditches. These ditches hold huge ecological potential, supporting ecosystem services such as carbon cycling and water transport, but they are also most heavily exposed to agrochemical inputs - a combination that may threaten biodiversity and undermine the very services they provide. This PhD position will focus on aquatic microbial ecotoxicology, aiming to unravel the effects of agrochemicals on the structure and functioning of microbial and viral communities in agricultural ditch sediments and the linked ecosystem function of carbon cycling. It incorporates pesticide mixture toxicity, which is severely...