Bodelier Group

Microbial Ecology

Group members

Senior Research Group:

Bodelier Group

Microbial communities are at the very basis of life on earth, catalyzing biogeochemical reactions driving global nutrient cycles. However, our knowledge on how specific microbes, their traits and the functions they catalyse are connected to these ecosystem services is still rudimentary. In the Bodelier group we study functional ecological aspects of microbes by connecting microbial identity to functioning in lab and field settings to elucidate the role of microbial diversity and traits in regulating important ecosystem processes like greenhouse gas emission from terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

We combine classical, genomic, isotopic and biogeochemical approaches to link communities to ecosystem fluxes and to assess distribution, functioning and controls of microbes in various habitats (e.g. floodplains, ditches, lakes, peatlands, and agricultural soils). Besides basic ecological questions we also explore the use of microbial functional groups and genes for the benefit of society e.g. as biogeochemical indicators of environmental disturbance by eutrophication or land use change or to optimize fertilizer strategies in agricultural soils minimizing greenhouse gas emissions.