MSCA-IF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Zoology.

Professor Juan Diego Ibáñez-Álamo, from the Department of Zoology at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF) in 2020 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information: http://sl.ugr.es/0aNV).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the UGR’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 5/10 of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding.

UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking (http://sl.ugr.es/0aw0). The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) places the UGR in 268th position in the world and as the 4th highest ranked University in Spain, reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. From the perspective of specialist areas in the ARWU rankings, the UGR is outstanding in Documentation (ranked in the 36th in the world) or Food science technology (ranked 37th in the world), Mathematics and Computer Science (ranked among the top 76-100 in the world).

The UGR has 4 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list in the Computer Science area. With regard to broader subject fields, the UGR is ranked in 45th position in the universities worldwide in the discipline of Engineering. It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i) taking 36th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe. Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last two Framework Programmes, the UGR has obtained a total of 66 projects, with total funding of 18.02 million euros, and for H2020, 80 projects with total funding around 20.6 million euros.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

Dr. J.D. Ibáñez-Álamo is member of the Animal Behaviour and Ecology group, which is formed by 4 permanent, 1 non-permanent researcher and 3 PhD students. In the years 2015-2020, the group secured a total of 6 research projects (844K€) from different national and international sources. The scientific output of these 5 years is 74 scientific papers in JCR journals. In addition, 1 book (Oxford University Press) and 6 book chapters were published and 24 contributions to international conferences were presented by members of the group. A total of 4 PhD and 13 MSc theses were successfully supervised in different national and international universities.

This multidisciplinary group is focused in the study of animal interactions and their evolution. It has three main research lines. Dr. M. Soler (H-index 47, 7740 citations) leads the research in parent-offspring interactions and brood parasitism. His studies on animal behavior are classic examples in national and international teaching books. Dr. M. Martín-Vivaldi (H-index 28, 2592 citations) leads the research in animal-microbes interactions, a research frontier in current Biology. His multidisciplinary studies with the Eurasian Hoopoe and its ecological and evolutionary interactions with microbes have become classic examples of bird-microbes interactions. Dr. T. Perez-Contreras (H-index 23, 1471 citations) leads the research in birds-insects interactions, with a special focus on animal behavior. Dr. J.D. Ibáñez-Álamo (H-index 20, 1785 citations) leads the research in human-nature interactions, particularly in urban ecology.

Project description

Dr. J.D. Ibáñez-Álamo investigates on animal interactions. Currently, his main research line focuses on human-nature interactions, particularly in the context of urban ecology. He investigates three main aspects within this topic: (1) biodiversity effects (Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2017 Glob. Chang. Biol.; Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2020a STOTEN); (2) ecophysiological effects (Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2018 Biol. Lett.; Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2020b STOTEN); and (3) behavioral changes (Ibáñez-Álamo & Soler 2010 Biol. J. Linn. Soc.). He explores these questions using different scales, from local to global, and approaches that includes experiments, observational and comparative (multispecific) analyses. He uses birds as his main model system, but is open to work with other animals too. Most of his studies have been carried out in Europe, but he is increasingly becoming interested in cities from tropical regions, and consequently a big part of his current studies focuses now on these areas. In addition to human-nature interactions, he also works with other types of intraspecific (parent-offspring; Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2018 Anim. Behav.) and interspecific animal interactions (predator-prey, brood parasitism and host-microbes –Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2015 J. Ornithol.; Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2019 Plos One–), all of them having the nests of birds as focal system (e.g. nest sanitation, nest design and nest predation). He is convinced that collaborative work allows responding many more interesting questions than working alone, therefore he carries out most of his studies with multiple international collaborators.

Research Area

Environment and Geosciences (ENV) and Life Sciences (LIFE)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Juan Diego Ibáñez-Álamo (jia@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)