[Coral-List] Post-Doc position in “Community structuring, phylogeography, and ecological traits from the Brazilian scleractinian endosymbiont zooxanthellae”

[Marcelo Kitahara]

Dear Coral-List,


We are pleased to put out this call for a post-doctoral researcher in “Community structuring, phylogeography, and ecological traits from the Brazilian scleractinian endosymbiont zooxanthellae” with a closing date of July 30, 2022.

Mass bleaching events have become increasingly frequent and leading to higher coral mortality on the Brazilian coast. Still, Brazil's coral reefs are considered particularly tolerant to the impacts of global warming. However, in terms of the SWA, information regarding latitudinal community structure and shifts due to climate change still scarce. Furthermore, we are still to understand potential patterns of zooxanthellae community shifts in the SWA corals and its relationship to the holobionts’ fitness to our changing environment. Both figure within the main targets of the present proposal.

The preferred candidate will, together with the associated researchers from the main proposal, co-lead this complementary research, which will enable us to further understand the holobiont fitness/adaptation in time of increasing anthropogenic-related impacts. To achieve that, in situ zooxanthellae community profile from the Brazilian corals will be determined, and in situ and ex situ experiments will test the zooxanthellae community potential turnover due to ocean warming. The postdoc activities include assisting on sampling, planning and executing transplant experiments, DNA/RNA extractions, and library preparation for NGS sequencing, data analysis, and writing. The candidate will also have the opportunity to develop research in their particular area of interest.

We are looking for a researcher with strong molecular biology/bioinformatics and organizational skills, and the ability to work well in collaborative groups.
This position will be under my mentorship in the Center for Marine Biology of the University of São Paulo (CEBIMar/USP - http://cebimar.usp.br/pt/). Interested candidates should send an email to kitahara at usp.br, containing (PDF format): a) letter of recommendation; b) resume; c) history of experience in the preparation and execution of in and ex situ experiments on marine organisms; and d) experience in sampling (including scuba diving), molecular techniques (from DNA and RNA extraction to library preparation for sequencing on the Illumina platform), and bioinformatics (short sequence analysis).

The selected candidate will receive a Post-Doctoral Fellowship from FAPESP (https://fapesp.br/en) <https://fapesp.br/en)> of BRL 8,479.20/month and RT of 10% of the fellowship amount to cover unforeseen expenses related to the research activity.


Sincerely,
Marcelo V. Kitahara