Damschen Lab Ph.D. Position in Plant Community Assembly

The Damschen Plant Community Ecology Lab in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is accepting applications for 1 Ph.D. student that will start in Fall 2025.

Overall, our lab seeks to understand the impact of local and regional processes on plant community composition and diversity within the context of global change impacts and potential conservation and restoration solutions. Our research lies at the interaction of basic and applied community ecology, using long-term datasets, large-scale experiments, and functional traits to test basic theory with relevance to applied conservation management. While we work across ecosystem types, we focus on fire-maintained grasslands and savannas. More information about our research group can be found here: https://damschenlab.zoology.wisc.edu/

We are seeking one Ph.D. student for Fall 2025 to work on a collaborative project with Damschen Lab members and the Natural Resources Conservation Service to design and implement a multi-site field experiment testing for the role of seed limitation and sourcing in community assembly and restoration outcomes. This research will require the using ecological theory to design experimental tests of community assembly mechanisms with the goal of increasing the capacity to predict restoration outcomes for both ecologists and land managers.

Successful applicants will have a range of prior experiences in both theoretical and applied, field-based ecology as well as the ability to collaborate with academics, land managers, and land owners. We seek applicants with significant previous leadership experiences, for example, leading field crews, helping to curate and manage large datasets, and seeing ecological projects through from design to publication. Qualified applicants should have a strong background in ecology and evolution, experience identifying and sampling plant communities, experience using statistical models to analyze data (ideally programming in R), and very strong writing and oral communication skills. In addition, because we train large numbers of undergraduates in our lab, successful applicants should have the experience and interest in serving as research mentors. The position will be funded by a combination of teaching and research assistantships.

Our lab welcomes diverse people and perspectives in our science, our lab culture, and in our broader communities. We openly acknowledge that racism, sexism, and other power differentials are a part of the places and cultures we live in. We are dedicated to continually working to improve our understanding of these power differentials and build a lab culture that values unique perspectives, innovation, and collaboration.

Applications are due by December 1, 2024. Instructions on how to apply can be found at  https://integrativebiology.wisc.edu/prospective-graduate-students/. Please indicate in your application that you are interested in applying to Ellen Damschen’s Lab and write about potential questions you could address within a Ph.D. program in our lab that address the themes above.