Two Master projects: “Relationship between genetic biodiversity and Holocene climate change in Eastern Germany”BackgroundThe section Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems (belongs to the division of geoscience) at Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz Centre for polar and marine research in Potsdam is looking for two Master students (Geosciene/Geoecology/Biology/Ecology).
Climate change strongly affects Eastern Germany resulting in a drier climate which alters the landscape and threatens aquatic ecosystems. Past relationships between climate and biodiversity changes helpto improve our understanding of recent effects and might help to foresee biodiversity changes to support future provisions.
The announced topics will focus on the detection of biodiversity changes (mainly plant diversity changes) in Eastern Germany. The master students will apply genetic approaches to analyze ancient sedimentary DNA from lake sediment cores from the Tiefer See in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (dates back 11.000 years ago) and the Sacrower See in Brandenburg (200 years before present). The first project will focus on biodiversity changes during concise climatic shifts during the Holocene, whereas the second project will focus on biodiversity changes under recent global warming compared to pre-industrial times.
The master students will be initially supervised by AWI and co-supervised by GFZ (Geoforschungszentrum Postdam).TasksYou will mainly work in the paleogenetic laboratories at AWI Potsdam. The lab work will include sediment core sampling, DNA extraction, PCR, gel-electrophoresis and preparation for NGS-sequencing. Subsequent data analyses will cover, DNA sequence analyses with bioinformatic tools and statistical analyses using R. Requirements Enthusiasm and interest in plant ecology, climate change and molecular lab work Further Information You are interested?You are interested?Then please send us your application with Cover letter and CV (with all documents merged into one PDF file) by e-mail to: Dr. Kathleen Stoof-Leichsenring (kathleen.stoofleichsenring@awi.de), and Prof. Dr. Susanne Liebner (susanne.liebner@gfz-potsdam.de)
For further information please contact:
Kathleen.Stoof-Leichsenring@awi.de
This research center is part of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. With more than 42,000 employees and an annual budget of over € 5 billion, the Helmholtz Association is Germany’s largest scientific organisation.