Silke Langenheder

Silke's keynote tiel is: Effects of environmental variability and different disturbance types on microbial diversity, functioning and community assembly

Environmental change encompasses gradual change, stochastic to periodic fluctuations in environmental conditions, as well as pulse events, i.e., abrupt unpredictable changes of environmental factors. Global change research has to a large extent focused on studying effects of altered mean environmental conditions, whereas the importance of stochastic event-driven dynamics and their characteristics, as well as responses to multiple environmental disturbances, including press and pulse disturbances, is less studied. In my presentation I will therefore present results from mesocosm experiments that had the aim to study how these understudied attributes of environmental change can alter ecosystem process rates, biomass and community composition, diversity, temporal turnover and community assembly mechanisms in microbial communities.