Wednesday, August 4, 2010 - 1:35 PMSYMP 13-1: Do they or don't they? A synthesis of microbial response to environmental change
Teri C. Balser, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Background/Question/Methods
Microbial communities have long been thought to possess infinite plasticity, yet evidence in recent years increasingly indicates compositional resistance to change. While this discovery may largely be due to the changing nature of soil biological research – with its move beyond single-season and single-factor experiments, it nevertheless highlights a critical area in current ecosystem studies and soil microbial ecology. Do they or don't they change? When? Under what circumstances? And does it matter?
Results/Conclusions
In this talk I review microbial community compositional shifts. First I address general microbial response to change – as individuals through their physiological stress responses and as communities through sorting and succession. I will highlight what we don’t know (e.g. microbial community ecology), as well as show data demonstrating what we do know about the surprising resistance of microbial communities to change some times, but not others. Second, I will explore the potential importance of temporal scale and acute versus chronic change in impacting microbial communities. Finally I will question whether ultimately it matters at all anyway.
Microbial communities have long been thought to possess infinite plasticity, yet evidence in recent years increasingly indicates compositional resistance to change. While this discovery may largely be due to the changing nature of soil biological research – with its move beyond single-season and single-factor experiments, it nevertheless highlights a critical area in current ecosystem studies and soil microbial ecology. Do they or don't they change? When? Under what circumstances? And does it matter?
Results/Conclusions
In this talk I review microbial community compositional shifts. First I address general microbial response to change – as individuals through their physiological stress responses and as communities through sorting and succession. I will highlight what we don’t know (e.g. microbial community ecology), as well as show data demonstrating what we do know about the surprising resistance of microbial communities to change some times, but not others. Second, I will explore the potential importance of temporal scale and acute versus chronic change in impacting microbial communities. Finally I will question whether ultimately it matters at all anyway.