Research Questions
High Mountain Microbial Ecology deals with the interactions between ecological determinants (= environmental selection forces) and the biological responses (selective adaptation) on one side and with interactions between microbes in particular niches. The following questions are presently being addressed by the Microbial Ecology Group:
- Which ecological determinants are selecting for the diversity present in the extreme environments of high mountain ecosystems, which ones select for specificity which ones for complexity ?
- How do environmental events (chronic and catastrophic ones) influence selection, development and disappearance of certain phenotypes ?
- Can we find paleo-evidence of biogeochemical processes which might have been prevailing at one time but which have disappeared since ?
- What makes prokaryote communities the most successful organisms to live and survive in these extreme environments ?