Macrozoobenthos distributions in the Dutch Wadden Sea

The Wadden Sea is a UNESCO world heritage site and home to a variety of species. Macrozoobenthos are the largest group of secondary producers in the food web and in turn a major food source for birds, fish and invertebrates. Examples of macrozoobenthic species are cockles Cerastoderma edule, Baltic tellin Macoma balthica, mudshrimp Corophium volutator, and lugworms Arenicola marina, but include many more. We want to understand their habitat use and spatial distributions, as well as species interactions in the Dutch Wadden Sea and how distributions and abundances are affected by (changing) environmental factors.

Within this MSc project, we want to take advantage of the 15 years of information collected along 1151 km² of intertidal mudflats through the SIBES project. We are looking for a master student who will explore these data to understand the distribution of macrozoobenthic species, changes in their population size, and/or species interactions. Example questions are: what habitat characteristics drive species distributions? How does population size change over time? Do species compete for resources? Which species co-occur and why?

The master student will learn how to analyze, plot and interpret community data, also gaining experience in large data-set wrangling in R. Because the data is already collected, the project is possible to do remotely (if required). Students can also conduct their research at the NIOZ (Texel). In either circumstance, full support will be given by the daily supervisors. It may be possible that the student can join fieldwork on sampling the intertidal macrozoobenthic community of the Wadden Sea.

Contact

Daily supervisors of this MSc project are Dr. Paula de la Barra and Dr. Allert Bijleveld. If you are interested in this position, please email them (paula.de.la.barra@nioz.nl and allert.bijleveld@nioz.nl).