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Soil microorganisms are the hidden engines of all global biogeochemical cycles and are essential to life on Earth. The Soil Ecology Research Group, led by Andreas Richter, focuses on understanding how microbial growth and turnover regulate the decomposition and transformation of organic matter in soils. Ultimately, their goal is to predict how future climate change, including climate extremes, will reshape microbial physiology, cross-kingdom microbial interactions, and microbial communities and their processes, and how this may feed back on climate change.
The Soil Ecology Research Group expands and redefines the theoretical concepts of microbial growth, as well as carbon- and nitrogen-use efficiency, linking these to ecological stoichiometry theory. They also pioneer novel approaches to quantify microbial growth processes using stable oxygen and hydrogen isotopes. The group explores microbial activities and soil organic matter turnover in a wide variety of ecosystems, ranging from Arctic tundra to tropical rainforests across all continents.
• Ecology of Soil Microorganisms and Their Interactions
• Climate-Change Ecology of Microbial Communities
• Microbial Growth, Turnover, and Carbon-Use Efficiency
• Biogeochemical Cycling of Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus
• Microbial Controls on Soil-Climate Feedbacks
Climate changes and elevated CO2 have major impacts on biogeochemical cycles, which may in turn feed back on the climate system. ClimGrass-C is a new…
The Arctic is warming more rapidly than any other region in the world. There, permafrost soils cover ~25% of terrestrial surface and hold the world's…
The Amazon rainforest stores large amounts of carbon in plant biomass and in soils, and is an important sink for atmospheric CO2 setting off increased…
Canarini, A., Fuchslueger, L., Schnecker, J., Metze, D., Nelson, D., Kahmen, A., Watzka, M., Pötsch, E., Schaumberger, A., Bahn, M., Richter, A. (2024) Soil fungi remain active and invest in storage compounds during drought independent of future climate conditions. Nature Communications 15: 10410.
Metze, D., Schnecker, J., Le Noir de Carlan, C., Bhattarai, B., Verbruggen, E., Ostonen, I., Janssens, I.A., Sigurdsson, B.D., Hausmann, B., Kaiser, C., Richter, A. (2024) Soil warming increases the number of growing bacterial taxa, but not their growth rates. Science Advances 10: eadk6295.
Metze, D., Schnecker, J., Canarini, A., Fuchslueger, L., Koch, B.J., Stone, B.W., Hungate, B.A., Hausmann, B., Schmidt, H., Schaumberger, A., Bahn, M., Kaiser, C., Richter, A. (2023)
Microbial growth under drought is confined to distinct taxa and modified by potential future climate conditions. Nature Communications 14: 5895.
Canarini, A., Schmidt, H., Fuchslueger, L., Martin, V., Herbold, C., Zezula, D., Gündler, P., Hasibeder, R., Jecmenica, M., Bahn, M., Richter, A. (2021) Ecological memory of recurrent drought modifies soil processes via changes in soil microbial community. Nature Communications 12: 5308.
Soong, J.L., Fuchslueger, L., Marañon-Jimenez, S., Torn, M.S., Janssens, I.A., Penuelas, J., Richter, A. (2020) Microbial carbon limitation - the need for integrating microorganisms into our understanding of ecosystem carbon cycling. Global Change Biology 26: 1953-1961.
Zevenhuizen, A. L., Richter, A., Fuchslueger, L., Prommer, J., Janssens, I. A., Verbrigghe, N., Peñuelas, J., Sigurdsson, B. D., & Marañón-Jiménez, S. (2025). Microbial Nitrogen Cycling Becomes Conservative and Resilient to Long-Term Warming in High-Latitude Carbon-Limited Soils. Global Change Biology, 32(1), 1-13. Article e70673. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70673
Krasenbrink, J., Hanson, B. T., Weiss, A. S., Borusak, S., Tanabe, T. S., Lang, M., Aichinger, G., Hausmann, B., Berry, D., Richter, A., Marko, D., Mussmann, M., Schleheck, D., Stecher, B., & Loy, A. (2025). Sulfoquinovose is exclusively metabolized by the gut microbiota and degraded differently in mice and humans. Microbiome, 13(1), Article 184. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-025-02175-x
Wang, H., Lindemann, E., Liebmann, P., Varsadiya, M., Svenning, M. M., Waqas, M., Petters, S., Richter, A., Guggenberger, G., Barta, J., & Urich, T. (2025). Methane-cycling microbiomes in soils of the pan-Arctic and their response to permafrost degradation. Communications Earth and Environment, 6(1), 1-11. Article 748. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02765-5
Zhang, Q., Qin, W., Li, X., Feng, J., Chen, Y., Zhang, Z., He, J. S., Richter, A., Schimel, J. P., & Zhu, B. (2025). Soil Carbon Availability Drives Depth-Dependent Responses of Microbial Nitrogen Use Efficiency to Warming. Global Change Biology, 31(9), Article e70490. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70490
Chen, S.-C., Li, X.-M., Battisti, N., Guan, G., Montoya, M. A., Osvatic, J., Pjevac, P., Pollak, S., Richter, A., Schintlmeister, A., Wanek, W., Mussmann, M., & Loy, A. (2025). Microbial iron oxide respiration coupled to sulfide oxidation. Nature, 646(8086), 925-933. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09467-0
Andreas Richter is part of the FWF-funded Cluster of Excellence (CoE)
