PhD position at Université de Poitiers (France)

Key details

• Host institution: Université de Poitiers
• Location: Université de Poitiers, 3 rue Jacques Fort, Poitiers, France
• Application deadline: May 15, 2026

Funding

Not funded by a EU programme

Funding level (from listing): partial or not via EU framework — confirm on the official call.

How to apply

• Apply by email to [email protected] (subject line and attachments per the official instructions).
• Full vacancy text and updates: Euraxess listing.

About the position

Job Offer: PhD Position at Université de Poitiers

Studies are increasingly showing a decline in biodiversity in agricultural areas, and there is strong social demand to understand and reduce the negative effects of agriculture on biodiversity. Along with the simplification of agricultural landscapes and crop diversity, pesticide use has increased in quantity and diversity. Among other factors, pesticides are suspected of playing a role in the decline of biodiversity in agricultural areas. However, demonstrations of an in natura effect of pesticides on biodiversity remain relatively rare (especially outside of avifauna), and studies are lacking to determine the effects of these substances, which are often encountered in sublethal doses but in cocktails.

This 3-year PhD thesis will address this gap by focusing on soil invertebrates, which are organisms that provide important ecosystem services for agriculture. Such studies are particularly necessary for these key ecosystem organisms: although invertebrates are taxonomically very diverse (making up the vast majority of biodiversity), ecotoxicological literature is largely dominated by the honey bee Apis mellifera.

The recent spatialization of pesticide sales data from the Banque Nationale des Ventes de produits phytopharmaceutiques by authorized distributors opens up new avenues of research to fill these gaps. By combining this pesticide use data with other environmental data (land use, farming practices, climate, soil properties) and biodiversity data from the citizen science program OAB (Observatoire Agricole de la biodiversité, https://www.observatoire-agricole-biodiversite.fr/), the PhD thesis will estimate the responses of soil invertebrate communities to multiple phytopharmaceutical substances, while dissociating them from the effects of other environmental factors. The more than 10 years that the OAB has been running will enable the addition of a temporal dimension to the project and the development of a quasi-causal approach.