How do you work with your passion in the research process? I sometimes tend to get carried away....

Two massive experiments are being harvested, starting today. This one is for @soilolive.bsky.social

Reading in journal club Köninger et al. Pesticide residues alter taxonomic and functional biodiversity in soils www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How to dose passion for your research. A personal take on the passion/ critical evaluation cycle in the timeline of a research problem. matthiasrillig.substack.com/p/how-to-dos...

What's predation like in the microbial world? Greg Velicer @usyseth.bsky.social and I take you on a tour in our new review! @ethz.ch @cnrs.fr

Reading in lab meeting: Aging and the narrowing of scientific innovation | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An interesting, short read: J. Craig Venter obituary: maverick biotechnologist who sequenced the human genome www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Lab culture: is good to have a vision for the lab? Some thoughts... What do you think? matthiasrillig.substack.com/p/lab-cultur...

Unsere bodenökologische Forschung ist in der aktuellen Ausgabe der Bild der Wissenschaft - siehe 'Von der Petrischale bis zum Acker'.

An important topic: We need to talk about failure in science www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Last week's Art-Science Meetup at our lab at @fubcp.bsky.social in collaboration with @artlaboratoryb.bsky.social was a success!! About 30 people, scientists and artists, listened to talks and then jointly discussed the topic of experimental co-design in mixed groups of scientists and artists.

Japan has cherry blossoms, but Schorlemerallee in Dahlem, Berlin, has Flieder. 😀😂

Can you let go? It seems like lab leadership entails relinquishing some measure of control. How do you calibrate this, what is the right level of letting go? Some thoughts...

Lab leadership and control: how much control are you willing to relinquish when leading a lab group? What is your answer? open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

Hot off the press #ScienceAdvancesResearch @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... we show that pathogens and non-pathogens share many effectors, and with subtle changes effectors from non-pathogens may become host immune modulators

Here is a question to ponder: If you could construct a terrestrial ecosystem from scratch, for example for use on another planet, as an enclosed system containing plants and a soil-like substrate: would you include plant pathogens or pathogens in general? Why or why not?

If you could build a synthetic plant-soil ecosystem from scratch for use on another planet (ignore if this makes sense or not), would it have mycorrhiza? Explain why or why not... 😀

One of my most updated posts: how to do good ecology. What would you add to the list of points? open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

Is soil ecology at risk of falling behind as AI is attracted to data-rich realms of science? What do you think? open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

Reading: Plastics, plastic chemicals, and microplastics: multiple harms to health - The Lancet www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Happy Earth Day! Our lab works to find out how human-made threats affect our soils and what we can do about it. #Earthday

I think this is a challenging exercise. Maybe just on paper, but maybe there are also use-cases where this sort of thinking could be put into practice (like high-emission point sources).

Reading in journal club AI has supercharged scientists—but may have shrunk science based on this Nature paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.science.org/content/arti...

If we wanted to put together an artificial ecosystem to maximize one function (let’s say carbon storage), how would we do it? I think this is interesting to think about… open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

Commentary in Nature Medicine: Closing the gap on antifungal resistance www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations to Peter Meidl for successfully defending his PhD thesis today!! Thanks to the committee and to everyone who came to the event online and in the lecture hall. @fubcp.bsky.social

Just online: Diversity of pharmaceuticals enhances antibiotic resistance in the invertebrate gut via biofilm-mediated mechanisms Another cool paper in a series of collaborative projects with Dong Zhu and Yong-Guan Zhu at CAS advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

How does this work in your head or in your lab group? Curious what others think about this balance of idea generation vs execution on established topics.

Moran et al. in Science Emergent predictability in microbial ecosystems www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Pretty little walk through the Berlin Botanical Garden.

Metz et al. in Nature (w/ Nico Blüthgen) Biodiversity resilience in a tropical rainforest www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Final version out: Critical thresholds in soil physical properties driven by microplastics | Microplastics and Nanoplastics We find quite low thresholds for microplastic effects on soil physical properties, using a published dataset link.springer.com/article/10.1...

How to strike the balance between developing new ideas and working on established problems? What is your answer? matthiasrillig.substack.com/p/striking-t...

Paper just accepted: Disentangling litter decomposition trajectories in streams: ecological insights from a global multi-model analysis Will share details once available

Paper just accepted: Global negative effects of fire on soil fauna communities vary with geographic factors and taxonomic groups Will share details once available

Paper just accepted: Host-mediated interactions between arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and saprotrophs drive soil organic carbon dynamics Will share details once available

Still one of my most-viewed posts: pseudoreplication in ecology and how to avoid it.... open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

A new experiment with several hundred units is being set up this week, exploring effects of a new factor of global change on soil processes. Can't wait to see the first results...always exciting.

Paper just out in ISME J Wang et al. AHL-mediated quorum sensing drives plastisphere formation and elevates pathogenic potential academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Just out: Wang et al. How sustainable agricultural management practices mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in paddy fields w/ Stavros Veresoglou and @joseppenuelas.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paper just accepted: How sustainable agricultural management practices mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in paddy fields Will share full details once available.

Beautiful!

Interesting: More self-reflection in research can lead to better science www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Global environmental change: how do we bring it to the people? Do we need new metaphors, narratives, visualizations? open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

Very interesting!

Article just online: Critical thresholds in soil physical properties driven by microplastics Headed by PhD student Tamara Meizoso-Regueira w/ Yingxue Yu, Markus Flury. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Very happy to have @cmarin.bsky.social give a talk in our lab meeting on multi-level selection. Great talk and interesting discussion.

Paper just out in Nature Communications: Global patterns and drivers of soil microbial nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiency Led by Yongxing Cui, with many co-authors including @joseppenuelas.bsky.social @manudelbaq.bsky.social & others. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Do-it-yourself in labs or farming things out? Should we do as much as possible in our labs or send samples to companies for analysis? What do you think…. open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

Can there be a recipe for how to most effectively get to the interesting questions at the interfaces between fields of science?