Interactions between plants and microbes in the rhizosphere are regulating nutrient cycling, plant productivity, and ecosystem resilience. Rapidly occurring climate and land-use change are reshaping these interactions in complex and often unpredictable ways and can affect short- and longer term ecosystem functioning. Rhizosphere dynamics are particular undesrstudied in tropical ecosystems, which are often growing on highly weathered mineral soils, and the collaboration and competition between microbes and plants is highly important for forest nutrient cycling. I aim to unravel soil edaphic controls over microbial structure and functions across tropical forest soil systems across larger forest stand to small scale rhizosphere scales and will discuss how root dynamics and exudate composition can influence microbial nutrient cycling.
Nature of Life Seminar: Dr. Lucia Fuchslueger 10 March 2026 15:30 - 17:15
About Nature of Life Seminar: Dr. Lucia Fuchslueger
Starting date
- 10 March 2026
Time
- 15:30 - 17:15
Location
- NU Building
- NU-4A25
Address
- De Boelelaan 1111
- 1081 HV Amsterdam
Organised by
- A-LIFE, Systems Ecology
Language
- English
About our speaker:
I am a Junior Research Group leader at the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science, University of Vienna in Austria, where I explore the role of microbes for soil carbon storage and nutrient availability, and competition or collaboration with plants in the rhizosphere. One of my major research interests is to better understand how current and predicted climatic changes affect soil microbial communities, their activity and physiology by analyzing community structure and carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus turnover. With my team and collaborators, we are investigating agricultural sites, climate change experiments in temperate, sub-arctic and tropical ecosystems.
