We are a research team (petrkeil.github.io) at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences of CZU in Prague, Czech Republic. We study how nature changes in time. Have animal populations been declining or recovering? Have humans triggered the sixth mass extinction? We aim to answer these questions by analyzing temporal trends in large biodiversity databases, focusing on birds, mammals, butterflies, and vascular plants. We also use remotely sensed data from satellites.

You would help us with data entry, and with maintenance of existing databases. This includes converting published literature into digital data, various tasks including online search, data cleaning, identification of problematic entries, data harmonization, and improvement of database structure. The job is suitable for students or parents seeking an extra income.

We require:

• Interest/experience in natural sciences, computer science, or technical fields. Students currently in BSc, MSc, or PhD programs are encouraged to apply.
• English – you will read and communicate with our international team members.
• Good command of MS Excel or similar software. Advantageous is basic experience with R, Python, or similar environment, and/or GIS. Some experience with databases (MS Access, SQL) and data management may be useful.
• We welcome applicants of all genders, backgrounds, and ages.

We offer:

• Starting gross salary of 22,000 CZK / month for 50% FTE, and a 1-year contract.
• A laptop for the duration of the job.
• International working environment (the working language is English), office space at CZU in Suchdol.
• Access to university facilities and subsidized lunches at Menza.
• Immediate start of the job.
• Flexible working hours and the option to partly work from home.

Applications

To apply, please e-mail (to beast@fzp.czu.cz) your English-written CV (1 page max) and a short motivation letter (1 page max) stating why you are a fit to the team and for the job. Put “data technician” to the email subject. Evaluation will start on 25/3/2024 and will continue until the position is filled.

Are you a master student in your final year? Are you pondering carreer in research? I offer a fully funded, 3+ years, full-time PhD position in space-borne remote sensing and biodiversity.

The position is part our ERC-funded project BEAST (“Biodiversity dynamics across a continuum of space, time, and their scales”) which studies how biodiversity has changed in time at local, regional, and continental scales, during the last 50 years. The focus is on terrestrial taxa (vertebrates, plants) and facets of biodiversity which can be remotely sensed from satellites.

The candidate will analyze temporal change of remotely sensed spectral diversity, i.e. diversity of spectra captured by spaceborne satellite sensors such as MODIS or SENTINEL. The practical goal is to link this spectral diversity with locally measured taxonomic diversity (and to test the so called “spectral variability hypothesis”), and to investigate if the remotely sensed biodiversity change can be used as a proxy for temporal change of taxonomic diversity.

How to apply?

Details, requirements, salary, and application instructions are here. Application deadline is 4th of February 2024.

We have attended the 11th Biennial Conference of the International Biogeography Society (7-11th January 2024, Prague, Czech Republic). Huge thanks to the organizers, particularly to Anna Toszogyova and David Storch from CTS!

These were our posters:

• Leroy F, Jarzyna M, Keil P: Acceleration and demographic rates of bird decline in North America

• Soria C, Ortega-Solis G, Bartak V, Stastny K, Bejcek V, Mikulas I, Keil P: Spatial autocorrelation of diversity and distributions in time and across spatial grains

• Bazzichetto M, de Belo F, Perrone M, Gotzenberger L, Keil P: Biodiversity-related mechanisms of ecosystem resistance under compoud dry-hot extreme events

• Ortega-Solis G, Mellado-Mansilla D, Craven D, Kreft H, Diaz I, Tello F, Tejo C, Armnesto J: Distribution and effects of trash-basket epiphytes and tank-bromelias on canopy biodiversity and ecosystem functions

• Mellado-Mansila D, Weigelt P, Kessler M, Craven D, Zotz G, Kreft H: The global distribution of ferns with chlorophyllous spores

• Tschernosterova K, Travnickova E, Grattarola F, Keil P: SPARSE 1.0: a tamplate for databases of species inventories, with an open example of Czech Birds

• Grattarola F, Tschernosterova K, Keil P: Evidence of neotropical carnivores’ continental geographic range contractions over the last two decades

And some of us gave talks:

• Wolke F, Cabral A, Lim J, Kissling WD, Onstein R: Africa as an evolutionary arena for large fruits

• Keil P, Clark A, Bartak V, Leroy F: Connecting spatial scaling of biodiversity change to per-individual ecological processes

In a new paper led by Francois (Leroy et al. 2023 Ecography), we show how temporal change of species diversity can be decomposed to processes of extinction, colonization, and recurrence, and how this all plays out at different spatial scales. There is both substantial theory as well as a big empirical example of Czech Birds.

This is a major analysis in the context of our research in MOBI lab, and it is important for understanding of what’s been going on with biodiversity in the Anthropocene.

The paper also marks a crucial emerging collaboration of MOBI lab with Czech ornithologists and/or other members of our university, namely Jiri Reif (Charles University), Zdenek Vermouzek (Czech Society for Ornithology), Karel Stastny (FZP CZU), Vladimir Bejcek (FZP CZU), and Ivan Mikulas (Czech Society for Ornithology). Special thanks to Eva Travnickova for the work on the Czech bird atlas cards!

Scientifically, the paper deals with a complex problem, and Francois has managed to put it all together brilliantly, more so given that this was the first major quantitative analysis of his PhD. There were endless discussions over whiteboards, many dead ends, some frustrations, and all the struggles that necessarily come with exploring of a new scientific horizon, managing a large and messy empirical dataset, developing new theory, applying new analytical tools, and handling a multi-author situation.

Some say that PhD students should start with simpler tasks and move to more complex problems later, as they progress. This was not the case - substantial parts of the research were as new to me as they were to Francois. This made it more risky and frustrating at times, but also more fun, and in the end more rewarding.

Congratulations Francois, I’ve learned a lot, and I am looking forward to further explorations with you!

In a new publication by MOBI lab members (Tschernosterova et al. 2023 Biodiversity Data Journal), we present a template for biodiversity databases that can store historical data on species inventories.

Biodiversity inventory is an event during which one or more experts survey a given site for all species, the experts report their survey methodology and effort, together with the list of species that they detect, sometimes with information on abundances or population densities. Inventories present a more valuable sources of data than presence-only observations aggregated by, e.g., GBIF. Literature is full of published inventories, and so mobilizing and digitizing them would be super valuable. However, the existing Darwin Core standard (used by GBIF) is not optimal for such data. Extensions to Darwin core, such as Humboldt core, have been proposed, but they are not yet full operational. In the new paper we propose a simple database structure based on Darwin core and Humboldt core that can store inventories, and that can be used by researchers with minimal knowledge of databases.

The template comes with a substantial new dataset on Czech birds (348 sites, 524 sampling events, 15,969 species-per-event observations).

We hope that this will be useful!

Too many things happened this fall, and I didn’t have time to report them. So here is the “best of”:

Dani has joined MobiLab. In Oct 2023, Deniela Mellado-Mansilla joined MOBI lab as a part-time data technician. Welcome Dani!

MOBI lab has registered for IBS annual meeting. You will have the opportunity to meet us at the International Society of Biogeography 11th Biennial Conference on 7-11 January 2024. Petr, Carmen, Manuele, Francois, Frieda, and Gabriel will be there with their posters and talks!

Petr gave an interview for ekolist.cz (in Czech). This is an interview about our research, the new ERC project BEAST, and some additional thoughts. Many thanks to Martin Mach for the patience with me!

MOBI lab, BEAST, and GRACE have new logos. This is thanks to graphic designer Adam Vosmera.

Flo Grattarola has been awarded CZU rector prize for her co-authorship on a paper on “The benefits of contributing to the citizen science platform iNaturalist as an identifier”. Congrats Flo!

We offer a full-time postdoctoral position (starting January 2024, up to 3 years) in a field spanning vegetation science, biodiversity, ecological statistics, and geographical information systems. The candidate will join the international team of Dr. Petr Keil at the Dpt. of Spatial Sciences at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic.

Research project and topic: The research will be part of 3-year project GRACE (“GRAssland Communities Experiment (GRACE): 300 years of insight from a large-scale natural experiment”, 2024-2026). GRACE is a joint grant from the Austrian FWF and Czech GACR, with co-PIs Adam Clark (University of Graz) and Petr Keil (CZU, Prague), and cooperation partners Franz Essl at Uni. Vienna and Hana Skokanová at VUKOZ, Brno. Other external collaborators include Helge Bruelheide and Ute Jandt at Uni. Halle (Germany), Stefan Dullinger at Uni. Vienna, and Milan Chytrý at Masaryk University Brno, as well as the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) and its ReSurveyEurope initiatives.

The research focuses on tracking interactive dynamics of landscapes and grassland plant communities, based on the natural experiment arising from differences in landscape structure along the Austrian-Czech border region.

Job description: The work will be mostly computational, with an opportunity to participate in summer fieldwork (optional). It will use the European Vegetation Archive data, historical land use data, and data from our own field surveys. This work will involve data cleaning and management, programming, and custom-tailored statistical analyses (in R, Python, Julia, or similar). There will be intensive use of geographic information systems (GIS). The postdoc will work with collaborators in Brno, Graz, and Vienna. Apart from being the lead author on papers and presenting on conferences, the postdoc will help with organization of meetings with the project co-PIs.

How to apply? Details, requirements, salary, and application instructions are here. Application deadline is 31th of October 2023.

We’ve been awarded a 3-year project GRACE (“GRAssland Communities Experiment (GRACE): 300 years of insight from a large-scale natural experiment”, 2024-2026). GRACE is a joint grant from the Austrian FWF and Czech GACR, with co-PIs Adam Clark (University of Graz) and Petr Keil (CZU, Prague), and cooperation partners Franz Essl at Uni. Vienna and Hana Skokanová at VUKOZ, Brno. Other external collaborators include Helge Bruelheide and Ute Jandt at Uni. Halle (Germany), Stefan Dullinger at Uni. Vienna, and Milan Chytrý at Masaryk University Brno, as well as the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) and its ReSurveyEurope initiatives.

The research focuses on tracking interactive dynamics of landscapes and grassland plant communities, based on the natural experiment arising from differences in landscape structure along the Austrian-Czech border region.

CZU and MOBI lab will host one full-time postdoc position funded from GRACE. We will also be looking for a field botanist for the 2024 and 2025 vegetation season. Get in touch if you know your plants and you’re looking for a seasonal summer job!

Frieda has joined our lab for her PhD to investigate universal relationships between biodiversity change and its reflection in static biodiversity data across various groups of organisms at macro scales.

Frieda did her master studies at iDiv (Leipzig, Germany) with Renske Onstein, which resulted in a paper in New Phytologist! More on Frieda’s website.

A significant part of MOBI lab (Carmen, Francois, Flo, Petr) attended the 2023 annual meeting of Ecological Society of America in Portland, Oregon. More than 4,000 visitors, massive poster session, workshops (thanks NASA!), and I must admit that we all nailed our talks! I was initially worried that it will be thematically too broad, but in the end I loved almost all of it, it was an intense and motivating experience.

These were our talk titles:

• Grattarola F, Bowler D, Keil P: Assessing hotspots of geographic range changes for charismatic carnivores in the Neotropics using Integrated Species Distribution Models (ISDM)

• Soria C, Pacifici M, Butchard S, Rondinini C: Latitude, environmental conditions, and traits influence mammal and bird responses to climate change

• Leroy F, Jarzyna M, Keil P: Decomposing temporal changes of biodiversity to loss, survival, and recruitment of individuals - a cross-scale analysis of Northern-American breeding birds

• Keil P, Clark A, Bartak V, Leroy F: Connecting spatial scaling of biodiversity change to ecological processes: Allee effect, Janzen-Connell effect, target effect, and beyond

Gabriel will work in the BEAST ERC project as a manager of spatial biodiversity data and big data on environmental conditions from remote sensing. His work will include data acquisition, processing, extraction, cleaning, high-level programming related to data, database design, and web hosting. Gabriel is also a GIS and Linux ninja, and he will look after our high-performance computers.

Before landing at MOBI lab, Gabriel did his PhD at Universidad Austral de Chile in forest sciences in 2016. He then worked as a researcher at University of Goettingen and executive secretary of sustainability at Universidad Austral de Chile.

Flo’s paper on integration of presence-only and presence-absence data has just been published online (Grattarola et al. 2023, Journal of Biogeography)! This was a wonderful collaboration with Diana Bolwer who helped us a great deal.

We have developed a new method that will enable us to map contractions and expansions of species’ geographic distributions, in regions and in species for which we have limited or badly heterogeneous data. The method can be super useful for assessment of conservation status of some charismatic species such as carnivorous mammals.

Flo pushed both conceptual and computational boundaries here, and it was totally worth it. We now have a fully Bayesian model that integrates two completely different types of data (presence-only points, presence-absence data), it considers spatial autocorrelation, temporal dimension, observational effort, environmental covariates, and it operates across a continuum of spatial scales. The model comes with a cool example species: Go Yaguarundi! Plus there is a commented code, and tons of materials for everyone to use and copy.

See Flo’s webpage for more info on her research.

Huge congratulations to Francois, who has just managed to push his first PhD chapter through peer review (Leroy et al. 2023, Basic and Applied Ecology)!

The paper is a review of current empirical literature on biodiversity change in birds, with focus on comprehensive studies of multiple sites across larger geographic areas. The study found that the magnitude and direction of biodiversity change depends on scale, but also on metric considered. Plus there is a considerable mess in how temporal scale is treated across the literature, and there are massive geographic biases.

See Francois’ webpage for more info on his research.

Petr, Flo, and Francois are co-authors on a new review paper (Moudry et al. 2023, Progress in Physical Geography) that provides guidelines on how to do species distribution modelling (SDM) when predictors and responses have different spatial grains (resolutions). The lead author is our colleague from Department of Spatial Sciences Vitezslav Moudry.

Petr is a co-author on two new studies, both examining ecological patterns using species traits:

1. Storch et al. (2023, Diversity and Distributions)) examines how have populations of Czech birds changed in time. We revealed that population trajectories can be classified to several types: linear trends, hump-shaped vs U-shaped trents, and more complex trends. These trends then correspond to specific species properties (traits). For example, species with increasing populations have long lifespand, warm climatic niches, and live in forests, while we observe population declines mosly in farmland birds. The lead author is David Stroch from Charles Universtiy in Prague.

2. Backes et al. (2023, Journal of Vegetation Science) ask why plant biodiversity in Tenerife declines towards high altitude. By looking jointly at biodiversity and functional traits, we show that the main driver of this decline is the joint effect of temperature and human disturbance, and not precipitation or decline in area towards high altitude. The lead author is Amanda R. Backes from from botanical garden in Halle (MLU Halle-Wittenberg, Germany).

We are excited to announced that, since 23rd of January, we have a new member of MOBI lab, Dr. Carmen Soria! Carmen did her PhD on Projected effect of global change on species’ change in extinction risk (open access repository) with Carlo Rondinini and Michela Pacifici at Sapienza Universita di Roma, Italy, within the Global Mammal Assessment. She also closely collaborated with Stuart Butchard from BirdLife International.

Carmen is an ecologist interested in investigating the mechanisms behind species’ distributions and responses to change and their variation across taxa, regions, and time, with a particular focus on mammals and birds. She has experience with compiling large databases of functional traits (e.g. here).

Carmen’s research at the MOBI lab will be within the BEAST ERC project, where she will develop and test models interpolating biodiversity change across space, time, and their scales.

Are you a master student in your final year? Are you pondering carreer in academia, biodiversity research, or remote sensing? I offer two fully funded, 4-year, full-time PhD positions in a field spanning macroecology, biodiversity science, ecological statistics, and space-borne remote sensing.

Briefly, the research is part our ERC-funded project BEAST (“Biodiversity dynamics across a continuum of space, time, and their scales”) which studies how biodiversity has changed in time at local, regional, and continental scales, during the last 50 years. The focus is on terrestrial taxa (vertebrates, plants) and facets of biodiversity which can be remotely sensed from satellites.

PhD Position 1: The objective is to analyze temporal change of taxonomic diversity in several datasets from across the world, and to investigate if temporal biodiversity change leaves characteristic imprints in static spatial patterns of biodiversity. The project is macroecological, i.e. it aims at documenting universal ecological patterns and laws that hold across regions and taxonomic groups, similarly to the laws of physics. This can be useful when assessing biodiversity dynamics in regions with poor data.

PhD Position 2: This project will analyze temporal change of remotely sensed spectral diversity, i.e. diversity of spectra captured by spaceborne satellite sensors such as MODIS or SENTINEL. The practical goal is to link this spectral diversity with locally measured taxonomic diversity (and to test the so called “spectral variability hypothesis”), and to investigate if the remotely sensed biodiversity change can be used as a proxy for temporal change of taxonomic diversity.

I want to know more. How can I apply?

Details, requirements, salary, and application instructions are here. Application deadline is 15th of February 2023.

We are looking for:

• Postdoctoral reseracher in biodiversity science, macroecology, and ecological modelling. 2 years, full time, starting January 2023. Details and application instructions.

• Spatial data manager / programmer who can handle GIS and spatial data, and who can program in R/Python/Julia or similar. 2 years, full time, starting January 2023. Details and application instructions.

Review of applications for both jobs will begin on 20th of October 2022 and will continue until the positions are filled.

Petr has been awarded ERC consolidator grant by the European Research Council. The aim of the project is to explore what’s been happening with terrestrial biodiversity, testing new models connecting local and regional processes.

The grant agreement hasn’t been signed yet, but preparations have been in progress to locate the grant at Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague.

Stay tuned for PhD/postdoc openings!

Petr and Francois attended IBS biennal meeting in Vancouver 2022 (June 2 - June 6, 2022). The photo shows Francois giving talk on his work on cross-scale biodiversity change in Czech birds.