A5055923204- Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
- Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Polar Research and Ecology
- Soil and Water Nutrient Dynamics
- Climate change and permafrost
- Freshwater macroinvertebrate diversity and ecology
- Mercury impact and mitigation studies
- Peatlands and Wetlands Ecology
- Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies
- Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies
- Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology
- Lichen and fungal ecology
- Protist diversity and phylogeny
- Gut microbiota and health
- Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Invertebrate Taxonomy and Ecology
- Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
- Mycorrhizal Fungi and Plant Interactions
- Heavy metals in environment
- Cryospheric studies and observations
- Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Bacteriophages and microbial interactions
- Chromium effects and bioremediation
- Heavy Metal Exposure and Toxicity
- Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies
Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
2016-2025
University of Pretoria
2014-2017
Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries
2011-2016
ETH Zurich
2011-2016
Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology
2011-2016
Ecologie Microbienne Lyon
2015
Leibniz Association
2013
Fischer (Germany)
2012
Bacterial abundance is a fundamental measure in microbiology, but its assessment often tedious, especially for soil, and sediment samples. To overcome this limitation, we adopted time-efficient flow-cytometric (FCM) counting method involving cell detachment separation from matrix particles by centrifugation tubes receiving sample suspensions Histodenz(®) solution. We used approach to assess bacterial abundances diverse soils (natural agricultural), sediments (streams lakes) sludge...
While vegetation has intensively been surveyed on mountain summits, limited knowledge exists about the diversity and community structure of soil biota. Here, we study how climatic variables, vegetation, parent material, properties, slope aspect affect microbiome 10 GLORIA (Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine environments) summits ranging from lower alpine to nival zone Switzerland. At these sampled soils all four aspects examined bacterial fungal communities vary by using...
Abstract Microbes in hot desert soil partake core ecosystem processes e.g., biogeochemical cycling of carbon. Nevertheless, there is still a fundamental lack insights regarding short-term (i.e., over 24-hour [diel] cycle) microbial responses to highly fluctuating microenvironmental parameters like temperature and humidity. To address this, we employed T-RFLP fingerprinting 454 pyrosequencing 16S rRNA-derived cDNA characterize potentially active bacteria Namib Desert multiple diel cycles....
Abstract Despite the dominance of microorganisms in arid soils, structures and functional dynamics microbial communities hot deserts remain largely unresolved. The effects wetting event frequency intensity on Namib Desert from two soils with different water-regime histories were tested over 36 days. A total 168 soil microcosms received events mimicking fog, light rain heavy rainfall, a parallel “dry condition” control. T-RFLP data showed that affected desert community structures, but these...
Ongoing climate change involves increasing snow scarcity, which results in more frequent freeze-thaw cycles (FTCs) polar and alpine soils. Although repeated FTCs have been shown to alter the structure functions of soil microbial communities, a thorough understanding on influence frequency especially microbiomes is still elusive. Here, we investigated impact weekly vs. daily FTC frequencies prokaryotic fungal communities from north- south-exposed soils two mountain ridges, one Arctic...
The relatively poor simulation of the below-ground processes is a severe drawback for many ecosystem models, especially when predicting responses to climate change and management. For meaningful estimation production cycling water, energy, nutrients carbon, integration soil exchanges at surface crucial. It increasingly recognized that biota play an important role in organic carbon nutrient cycling, shaping structure hydrological properties through their activity, water uptake by plants...
Soil microbial traits and functions play a central role in soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics. However, at the macroscale (regional to global) it is still unresolved whether (i) specific environmental attributes (e.g., climate, geology, types) or (ii) community composition drive key directly. To address this knowledge gap, we used 33 grassland topsoils (0-10 cm) from geoclimatic gradient Chile. First, incubated soils for 1 week favorable standardized conditions quantified wide range of such...
Soil organic matter (SOM) quantity drives soil bacterial community composition from the regional to global scale. Qualitative characteristics of SOM are known affect communities in manipulation experiments. However, it remains unresolved how strongly at macroscale. Here, we investigated versus qualitative shape along a biogeochemical gradient grassland soils. We assessed relative abundance patterns bacteria and characterised based on scalable methods. Soils with higher content (along...
Abstract Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has revolutionized biodiversity monitoring, offering non‐invasive tools to assess ecosystem health. The complexity of eDNA data poses major challenges for conventional ordination methods in understanding assemblage similarities and assessing patterns. Here, we introduce ORDNA (ORDination via Deep Neural Algorithm), a new deep learning method tailored sample ordination. Leveraging artificial neural networks, processes raw sequences from samples...
Summary Variability of flow and shear stress cause local sorting a patchy distribution grain size in streambed sediments. Sediment microbial communities can be affected by the resulting heterogeneity because determines (i) sediment surface area available for colonisation (ii) hydraulic conductivity hence advective mass transfer solutes redox partners. However, relative influence two factors on is not clear. We performed an experiment 12 indoor flumes with three types sediment: gravel (2–8...
Abstract Carrion is long recognized as important to scavengers. How carrion may affect soil microbial biodiversity and ecosystem processes in natural systems comparatively unknown, but for the intersection of vertebrate food webs, below‐ground ecological heterogeneity. We assessed situ plant responses wolf‐killed mammal Yellowstone National Park, USA. Bison elk carcasses increased respiration vegetation nutrient concentration contain altered bacterial fungal communities compared control...
ABSTRACT Succession of newly created landscapes induces profound changes in plant litter supplied to streams. Grasses dominate inputs into open-land streams, whereas tree is predominant forested We set out elucidate whether the activity and structure microbial communities on decomposing leaves are determined by quality (i.e., grass or colonized) during riparian succession affecting standing stocks stream bed play an overriding role. used 15 outdoor experimental streams simulate supplies...