Passing along an opportunity to the community.
Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to create a new biodiversity metric of animal mortality to inform global biodiversity policy. The postdoctoral researcher will synthesize methods across movement ecology, demography, and environmental data science to identify animal mortality events, quantify their drivers, and produce standardized, scalable metrics that link anthropogenic and environmental stressors to mortality risk and population change with the goal of creating a standardized indicator. This work would be part of the newly formed Animal Movement Biodiversity Observation Network (Move BON), a global coordination network connecting animal tracking data to biodiversity monitoring and policy endeavors. Specifically, the postdoctoral researcher would coordinate work within the Move BON Mortality Metrics Working Group co-led by Scott Yanco (NZCBI) and Ruth Oliver (UC Santa Barbara). Indicators developed in this project will be positioned for integration into national biodiversity strategies and Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework implementation via Move BON. The project would also produce a toolkit designed to produce metrics in formats compatible with existing national reporting obligations, and a cross-taxa case study will be developed in partnership with national reporting bodies to ensure direct policy relevance. Key outputs could include:
- Peer-reviewed publications establishing analytical methods and a theoretical framework for mortality-based biodiversity indicators;
- An open-source toolkit for reproducible indicator calculation (for example, open-source software tools or an online dashboard); and
- A national or regional case study demonstrating cross-taxa implementation suitable for adoption within biodiversity policy frameworks.
Learn more about this opportunity and apply here!
-Scott
Scott Yanco (he/him) Research EcologistYancoS@si.edu