The microbial world represents a largely unknown reservoir of biodiversity that is fundamental to sustaining key ecosystem processes, such as nutrient cycling and primary production, across the breadth of the Earth’s ecosystems.
In order to understand the role of microbial communities in ecosystem processes and to solve the major problems associated with human impact on the environment, comprehensive fundamental knowledge of microbial ecology & evolution is essential.
The primary focus of the department is to understand the ecology, diversity and functions of microorganisms in natural and man-made ecosystems.
We are actively involved in several of the NIOO-wide research themes, in particular chemical ecology, microbiomes, global environmental change, eco-evolutionary dynamics and disease ecology.
More specifically, we study: