Assembly and functioning of microbial communities in deadwood of natural temperate forest

Deadwood represents a specific habitat various in size among different forests that harborsvarious organisms including bacteria and fungi. Despite the general assumption that fungidominate deadwood decomposition, bacterial component of the microbiome is also important.The drivers of community composition, interactions of deadwood with living trees, ecosystemlevelimpacts of deadwood decay as well as the involvement of microbial taxa in deadwooddecomposition are largely unknown. In this project, description of community compositionacross sucession, characterization of deadwood bacteria and fungi, identification of in situactive taxa and their interactions will be used to understand the microbiology of deadwooddecomposition.