The BRIDGE project is an international project co-funded by the French Foundation for Biodiversity Research and the ITTECOP (Land Transport Infrastructures, Ecosystems and Landscapes Program (https://ittecop.fr/en/). The main objective of BRIDGE is to understand how landscape interactions between roadside corridors, river corridors and cultivated field margins shape the taxonomic and functional plant community diversity across a European gradient. A specific objective of the project will be to disentangle between biodiversity landscape level controls (landscape architecture and connectivity) and local controls (physical disturbance, substrate nutrient content…). At the landscape scale, we predict that the geographic proximity (vicinity, intersection) among the three studied habitats enhances both taxonomic (species) and functional (trait) diversities, as a result of a greater connectivity and dispersal between linear habitats. At the local scale, we predict that the nature and level of physical disturbance and trophic stress are the main drivers of functional redundancy/complementarity and taxonomical similarity among the different habitat types. At an applied level, we will investigate under which ecological conditions and landscape configurations the different linear ecosystems drive particular functional and taxonomic biodiversities that are likely to correspond to optimal situations for the interest of local or regional stakeholders.

The post-doc will be hosted in Montpellier (France) by the CESAB. The job holder will be under the supervision of Eric Tabacchi (CNRS, Toulouse) and Guillaume Fried (Anses, Montpellier) and will benefit from the expertise of all project members (8 persons from 6 countries with specialists in botany, land use planning, invasive species and functional ecology) and from the methodological and logistic support of the CESAB.