Resilience study of methane-consuming microbial communities

The increase of extreme drought and precipitation events due to climate change will alter microbial processes. Perturbation experiments demonstrated that microbes are sensitive to environmental disturbances. However, only little is known on the legacy effects in microbial systems. Here, we designed a laboratory microcosm experiment using methane-oxidizing communities as a model system. We focused on enrichments from soil, sediment and water reflecting communities with different legacy to exposure to drought. We sequenced the 16s rRNA gene from DNA to assess the bacterial population.