The human body hosts rich and diverse microbial communities. Our microbiota affects the normal human physiology, and compositional changes might alter host homeostasis and, therefore, disease risk. The microbial community structure may sometimes occupy discrete configurations and under certain circumstances vary continuously. The ability to characterize accurately the ecology of human-associate...

The short-term responses of soil microbial processes and community structure to perturbation constitute one aspect of soil quality. Such responses are often associated with an increase in the emissions of greenhouse gases (i.e., CO2, NO, or N2O) and the accumulation and potential loss of nitrate by leaching. Here we describe our recent work on responses of soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics, mic...

and fungi, are vital to the function of all ecosystems. This is largely because they exist in enormous numbers (there are roughly 5 × 10 bacteria alone worldwide) and so have immense cumulative mass and activity. They are also probably more diverse than any other organisms, so it is easy to see why the structure of microbial communities, that is, the different kinds of organisms and their abund...

Because biogas bubbles can influence cap integrity, the effect of capping and cap material on the ebullition potential in sediments must be studied. The goal of this comprehensive study was to determine the short-term effect of capping regime on the activity, metabolic potential, and community structure of sediment microorganisms. To evaluate the effect of capping (sand, synthetic aggregate, an...

Prior field studies by our group have demonstrated a relationship between fluvial deposition of heavy metals and hyporheic-zone microbial community structure. Here, we determined the rates of change in hyporheic microbial communities in response to heavy-metal contamination and assessed group-level differences in resiliency in response to heavy metals. A controlled laboratory study was performe...

Understanding the responses of biological communities to elevated CO2 (eCO2) is a central issue in ecology, but little is known about the influence of eCO2 on the structure and functioning (and consequent feedbacks to plant productivity) of the belowground microbial community. Here, using metagenomic technologies, we showed that 10 years of field exposure of a grassland ecosystem to eCO2 dramat...