Two postdoctoral positions are available to join a collaborative research team funded by an NSF Microbiome Theory and Mechanisms grant that includes investigators at Boise State University as well as the Universities of Florida, Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The post-doctoral positions will be based at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison but both will work within the larger team investigating successional processes in the microbial communities associated with carnivorous pitcher plants. The plants host diverse microbial communities as part of a detrital food web of invertebrates. The project will employ interdisciplinary approaches including molecular genetics, biochemistry and ecological modeling to characterize the succession of microbial communities, functions and interactions with the plant host in this fascinating model system.

One Postdoctoral Research Associate position is available in the lab of Dr Erica Young in the Department of Biological Sciences at UW-Milwaukee. The researcher will contribute to intercontinental comparison of microbiome succession in field populations, but also run manipulative field experiments at the UW-Milwaukee field site at Cedarburg Bog to examine host effects on microbial community composition and functions using genetic analysis, hydrolytic enzyme activities and community metabolic profiling. The ideal candidate will have experience in microbial ecology, fieldwork and expertise in microbial diversity analysis including bioinformatics. Some experience in biochemical assays or chemical analysis, metacommunity transcriptomics analysis, or food web ecology is highly desirable. For more information, email Erica Young: ebyoung@uwm.edu

Another Postdoctoral Research Associate position is available in the lab of Dr. Zac Freedman in the Department of Soil Science at UW-Madison. The incumbent will contribute to fieldwork as part of a multi-site, intercontinental comparison of microbiome succession in field populations, as well as lead an effort to consider the data generated in this project in the context of microbial succession in other plant-associated and soil systems. In this way, we will target the question: can patterns of succession in pitcher plants and other soil and plant-associated microbiomes uncover general rules of microbiomes? To address this question, the post-doc will explore the succession of bacterial community composition and functions across systems using cutting edge modeling techniques. The ideal candidate will have experience in microbial ecology and fieldwork. Some experience in ecological modeling is highly desirable. For more information, email Zac Freedman: zfreedman@wisc.edu