The student will be enrolled at Montpellier University under the supervision of Dr Hervé Jourdan, and be partly based at IRD-Nouméa and at the CSIRO Tropical Ecosystems Research Centre in Darwin (Australia) under the supervision of Dr Alan Andersen.
Applications are sought for a PhD scholarship to work on the effects of fire on ant biodiversity in New Caledonia. The work is part of a broader project (INC- ANR Biodiversité) investigating the interactions between ecosystems, cultural and social practices, climate, and fire in New Caledonia. New Caledonia is biologically very diverse and rich in endemic species, and inappropriate fire management poses a serious risk to these conservation values. The New Caledonian ant fauna is of high biogeographic and conservation interest, and ants have been commonly used as indicators of ecosystem change world-wide.
Ants are widely recognised as the most important faunal group in tropical forests in terms of biomass and ecological function. As ecosystem engineers, they regulate the ecological processes that underlie the provision of ecosystem services to Indigenous communities. As bio-indicators, they are widely used as tools for assessing and monitoring ecosystem health. This thesis project will use ants to assess the biodiversity values of different forest types within New Caledonia, and to assess the impacts of fire on ecosystem health and therefore the provision of ecosystem services.
The PhD project will have two major aims: (1) to document the ant biodiversity and ecosystem service values of the full range of New Caledonian habitats; and (2) to develop a predictive understanding of human induced fires on these values. The extent of fire will be linked to social characteristics such as demography (population density, social hierarchy, migration rate), socio-economics (education, income level, unemployment rate…), agricultural land availability, land tenure or property (ratio of public/private land and declared land disputes…), anthropological factors (chiefdoms, languages, and religion), and urbanisation (distance between the fire occurrence and populated areas, agriculture fields, and road networks…).
Références
* Fournier, D., Estoup, A., J. Orivel, Foucaud, J., Jourdan, H., Le Breton, J., and Keller, L., 2005 - Battle of the sexes with clonal reproduction by males and females in the little fire ant. Nature 435: 1230-1234
* Le Breton, J., Jourdan, H., Chazeau, J., Orivel, J., and Dejean, A. 2005 - Niche opportunity and ant invasion: the case of Wasmannia auropunctata in a New Caledonian rain forest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 21(1): 93-98.
* Andersen, A.N., Cook, G.D. & Williams, R.J. 2003 - Fire in Tropical Savannas: The Kapalga Experiment, pp 153-164. Springer-Verlag, New York.
* Andersen, A.N., Hertog, T. & Woinarski, J.C.Z. 2006 - Long-term fire exclusion and ant community structure in an Australian tropical savanna: congruence with vegetation succession. Journal of Biogeography 33: 823-832.
* Hély C, Alleaume S. 2006. Fire regimes in dryland landscapes. Pages 283-301 in D'Odorico P,Porporato A, editors. Dryland Ecohydrology. Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands.
Entomological experience is preferable, but not necessary. Students must have obtained a Master degree or equivalent diploma.
Nature du financement : Financement public type bourse
Précision sur le financement : bourse ministérielle (50%) et gouvernement calédonien (50%)