A5016918713- Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
- Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies
- Mycorrhizal Fungi and Plant Interactions
- Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Plant nutrient uptake and metabolism
- Peatlands and Wetlands Ecology
- Gut microbiota and health
- Fungal Biology and Applications
- Plant-Microbe Interactions and Immunity
- Legume Nitrogen Fixing Symbiosis
- Lichen and fungal ecology
University of Vienna
2021-2024
Warming increases soil microbial respiration which leads to significant C loss. However, it has been shown that the initial increase in tends level off long term, sometimes even returning pre-warming levels. Two main hypotheses explain this short-lived thermal increase: (i) The concentration of substrate soils declines due increased activity, becoming a limiting factor and leading reduced overall respiration, or (ii) Microbial physiology adjusts higher temperatures improve fitness under new...
Abstract Soils provide essential ecosystem services and represent the most diverse habitat on Earth. It has been suggested that presence of various physico-chemically heterogenous microhabitats supports enormous diversity microbial communities in soil. However, little is known about relationship between their immediate environment at micro- to millimetre-scale. In this study, we examined whether bacteria, archaea, fungi organise into distinct individual 2-millimetre-sized soil aggregates...
Sugars and organic acids, primary components in plant root exudates, are thought to enhance microbial decomposition of matter the rhizosphere. However, their specific impacts on activity nutrient mobilisation remain poorly understood. Here, we simulated passive exudation investigate distinct effects sugars acids metabolism We released 13C-labelled and/or via reverse microdialysis into intact meadow forest soils over 6-hours. measured substrate-induced respiration, soil mineralization,...
Many agroecosystems face nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) or potassium (K) deficiencies due to imbalanced insufficient nutrient replenishment after plant biomass harvest. How this affects the symbiosis between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), abundance of exploration-based AMF guilds (i.e., rhizophilic, edaphophilic, ancestral) remains largely unknown. We studied a 70-year nutrient-deficiency experiment in managed grassland central Austria, where aboveground was harvested three...
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) form mutualistic associations with roughly 70% of vascular plant species, supporting the nutrient acquisition their host plants and deriving carbon in return. AMF communities are linked to each other by host-specificity ecological selection favorable trading strategies. Changing soil availabilities can affect both directly also indirectly via response partners.  We aimed elucidate combined (belowground) (aboveground) community compositions changing...
<p>Soil harbours a huge diversity of soil microbes.  One reason for this is thought to be its small-scale chemical and physical heterogeneity, which offers innumerable different parallel habitats thus niches the development microbial communities. However, while composition are usually assessed using gram-sized homogenized samples, knowledge how microbes actually spatially organized at smaller scales lacking.  This not only hampers our ability link...
<p>Fertilization experiments provide insights into elemental imbalances in soil microbial communities and their consequences for nutrient cycling. By addition of selected nutrients, other nutrients become deficient limiting microorganisms as well plants. In this study we focused on nitrogen (N) cycling a long-term manipulation experiment. many soils, the rate-limiting step N is depolymerization high-molecular-weight compounds (e.g., proteins) to oligomers peptides) monomers...
<p>Arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) fungi are associated with almost all land plants and provide soil nutrients other benefits to their plant hosts in exchange for photosynthetic products. While fertilization regimes managed grasslands or agricultural systems tailored increasing biomass, potential effects on AM rarely taken into account. Nutrient-driven changes abundance community composition of fungi, however, may feedback ecosystem performance the long term. Therefore, it is...