Postdoctoral Researcher in Wildlife Ecology at the Wildland-Urban Interface, UC Santa Barbara

UC Santa Barbara seeks a postdoctoral scholar to lead a new research programme on how wildlife communities respond to the expanding wildland-urban interface, in the Santa Barbara foothills where the mountain wildlands of Los Padres National Forest abut developed coastal landscapes. Questions include how vertebrate species richness, community composition and activity change across gradients of development, which species are sensitive to or benefit from edges, whether wildlife becomes more nocturnal near residences, whether protected lands next to development act as refuges, foraging habitat or corridors, and how human-associated resources alter behaviour and food webs.

The scholar will have substantial freedom to shape the research. The estimated salary is $71,491-$85,736, with a start anticipated in summer or fall 2027.

All PhD requirements except the dissertation completed at application, in ecology, wildlife biology, conservation biology, environmental science or a related field; doctorate by appointment. Useful experience includes camera trapping or automated biodiversity monitoring, vertebrate field ecology, eDNA and molecular ecology, acoustic monitoring, spatial ecology and occupancy modelling, and hierarchical or Bayesian statistics in R or Python.