GREEN Graduate Program "Evolutionary Ecology in Aquatic Environments (EEAE)"
ECTS
120 credits
Duration
2 years
Component
Collège Sciences et Technologies pour l’Energie et l’Environnement (STEE)
Language(s)
English
Presentation
In 2022, the University of Pau and Pays de l'Adour opened a 5-year Master’s degree + PhD program of excellence in a variety of disciplines linked to energy and environmental research, the Graduate School for Energy and Environmental Innovation (GREEN).
Every student accepted into the program will be offered a €5,000 stipend per year for the first two years (Talents' Academy).
Apply here from October to March
N.B. Our Master's programs may not open if enrollment is too low.
Aquatic ecosystems are both highly diverse and threatened by anthropogenic disturbances such as pollution, global change, eutrophication, harvesting, habitat loss, and fragmentation. These disturbances can have selective effects, or interact with selective factors, in a way that can impact evolutionary processes.
As these processes may either promote population resistance/resilience through adaptation or accentuate the threat through maladaptation, understanding evolutionary forces at work in natural and disturbed aquatic environments is paramount to assessing the fate of biodiversity and managing it in a sensible way in the long term.
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Student capacity
Objectives
This graduate program aims at training scientists who will be able to apply fundamental knowledge of evolutionary ecology in order to tackle the challenge of human-driven loss of biodiversity. As evolutionary processes may be difficult to document and are still not widely accounted for in the management of aquatic ecosystems, the graduate program is strongly research-oriented.
The disciplinary courses will deal with theoretical aspects of evolutionary ecology and empirical methods linked to its study in aquatic ecosystems. Through individual and group projects, students will mix fundamental knowledge and management application to reach their own blend of evolutionary ecology in aquatic environments.
Your university
Additional information
- €5,000 per year stipend in Master
- Classes taught in English
- More than one-third of credit hours acquired in research
- Integrating research laboratories right from the 1st semester
- Student-centered learning
- Multidisciplinarity (Chemistry, Physics, and Biology)
- Post-graduate studies with a PhD thesis - if the criteria of excellence are met
- Tutorship and tailor-made programs: each student will have a tutor who will build his curriculum related to his aspirations and research interest.
The tutor will also help the student define a series of face-to-face or e-learning courses (up to 20 or 25% for the Science graduate programs) that s/he can easily keep up with.
Organisation
Interdisciplinarity and research immersion in laboratories
In order to promote transversal and interdisciplinary activities, all the Graduate Programs proposed by GREEN are identically structured. In addition to the research training which represents 40% of a Master’s credits, the courses offered in each program are a combination of common thematic culture courses in the field of Energy and Environment (Sustainability Science, Resilience Alliance, Ecological Economics and Political Ecology, Health & Ecotoxicology, Energy Law & Policy…) and basic soft skills completed by fundamental and specialized disciplinary courses to fit with the research or topic of interest of the students.
Project-based learning
The research-based training program of our GREEN program follows the active pedagogy educational approach of “student-based learning.” The aim is to guide our students and help them structure their research and innovation projects while giving them a great deal of autonomy.
In the second year, there is therefore a significant reduction in the number of face-to-face courses in favor of project-based learning, in order to put students in a professional situation so that they can experiment with group work and project management. This framework encourages strong interaction between students, lecturers, and researchers to ensure easier integration into the host research laboratories. The interdisciplinary project proposed in the third semester should give students from all the graduate programs an opportunity to produce joint, multidisciplinary work.
Disciplinary courses
- Evolutionary ecology & management implications (40h): where you browse various key concepts in evolutionary ecology (sexual selection, habitat choice, local adaptation) through their implications for the management of populations or biodiversity
- Demogenetic dynamics in a changing environment (30h): where you model demo-genetic feedback loops to quantify the ability of populations to thrive and adapt in environments that change naturally or because of human-induced alteration.
- Phenotypes facing climate change (24h): where you explore the effect of climate change on thermal adaptation and life-history evolution.
- Eco-evolutionary feedback in aquatic communities (38h): where you merge within-population phenotypic adaptation and community structure to understand how they mutually shape each other.
- Bayesian inference for eco-evolutionary processes (20h): where you model complex ecological datasets in an approach that explicitly untangles biological and observation processes.
- Evolutionary genomics (12h): where you seek traces of diversity in genomic data and interpret them as ecological adaptation
- Journal club and synthesis (30h): where you dive into primary literature (both classic papers and fresh from the lab) and emerge with a synthetic view of evolutionary ecology.
Trainings
Intership | Mandatory |
|---|---|
Intership duration | 6 months/year |
Admission
Admission requirements
- Applicants must be fluent in English, both in writing and speaking. An applicant whose native language is not English has to take a recognized international English test.
- Minimum required score: CECRL B2 level in English.
- Applicants must hold a Bachelor's degree in Biology/Ecology. Eagerness for research is crucial, and endorsement by a research laboratory prior to application is much appreciated.
How to apply
And after
Professional insertion
Sectors
- Evolutionary ecology,
- Adaptation to global change,
- Biodiversity management,
- Fisheries regulation.
Fields
- Research & development,
- Research
Positions
- Lecturer,
- Researcher,
- Project manager
