Time-lapse View of Ecosystems of the Future

Biology Professor Matthias Rillig of Freie Universität Berlin Receives 2. Million Euros to Learn More about Consequences of Gradual Environmental Change by Studying Soil Fungi / With Photos - How do organisms react as individuals and in communities to environmental conditions that gradually change over a long period? Using a new experimental approach Matthias Rillig and his team at the Department of Biology at Freie Universität Berlin hope to investigate this issue using the example of soil fungi. The research is being funded for the next five years with almost 2.4 million euros from the European Research Council (ERC) in the form of an Advanced Grant. Climate changes such as global warming are taking place over long periods of time. Up to now scientists have more or less studied the impact of such environmental influences on ecological systems with experiments in which the environmental conditions - for example, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere - change relatively abruptly. In the recently approved research project "Gradual and Abrupt Environmental Change: The Connection between Physiology, Evolution, and Composition of the Community" Rillig and his team will take a new approach and examine gradual responses of ecological systems due to slow environmental changes in comparison to the other experiments. The scientists will also investigate how the organisms change in appearance and growth, which evolutionary changes occur, and how this in turn, affects the composition of the communities.