![]() Humans rely on marine ecosystems for economic and nutritional sustenance-including about 16% of animal protein consumed by humans-making it especially important for natural scientists, economists, conservationists and long-term policy planners to understand how climate change is likely to affect oceanic food webs. These results demonstrate that small temperature changes could dramatically shift food web dynamics and provide a general, species-independent mechanism for ecological response to environmental temperature change. In contrast, at lower resource levels, food web production was constrained at all temperatures. Warming shifted food web structure and reduced total biomass despite increases in primary productivity in a marine food web. Consistent with predictions based on universal metabolic responses to temperature, we found that warming strengthened consumer control of primary production when resources were augmented. We experimentally tested the effects of warming on food web structure and productivity under two resource supply scenarios. However, systematic variation in metabolic effects of temperature across trophic levels suggests that warming may lead to predictable shifts in food web structure and productivity. Many documented responses depend on species' life histories, contributing to the view that climate change effects are important but difficult to characterize generally. Interested candidates are already invited to contact Julia Kurth.Climate change disrupts ecological systems in many ways. Two PhD positions are available immediately in Julia Kurth's research group and will be advertised shortly. Kurth we have been able to recruit another excellent scientist who will reinforce our joint Future Center with her exciting research." Gert Bange, Vice President of the University of Marburg, says: "I am very happy that with Ms. For her work, she was awarded the prestigious Dutch KNVM VanLeeuwenhoek Prize in April 2022. She then worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the universities in Nijmegen and Wageningen in the Netherlands. Julia Kurth received her doctorate in biology from the University of Bonn, where she conducted research on bacterial sulfur metabolism. Against this background, it is particularly gratifying to have another excellent scientist at the Future Center researching this topic at the highest level." Victor Sourjik, director at the MPI and steering board member of the MCE, says: "Research on methane-forming microbes was already an important research focus of the Max Planck Institute when it was founded. One of my goals is to find out what impact methane formation from aromatic compounds has on the environment and climate change." Together with my future research group, I would like to expand our knowledge of these important microorganisms, understand their metabolism, and elucidate their global significance. In general, for many archaea we do not yet know how exactly their metabolism works. Julia Kurth explains: "Recently, more and more new archaea have been discovered through genetic analyses of environmental samples, but cultivable representatives or physiological studies are still missing. This methane formation from wood components by archaea could have a so far underestimated influence on the global methane and carbon cycles. What makes this remarkable is that these compounds originate from the main constituent of wood, lignin, and thus occur in large quantities on earth. Julia Kurth and colleagues discovered how the archaeon Methermicoccus shengliensis, which lives at an optimum temperature of 65 ☌, produces methane in a different way: by using so-called aromatic compounds. Previously, it was known that, methane can be mainly produced microbially in three ways: by using hydrogen and carbon dioxide, by the cleavage of small methane-containing compounds into methane and carbon dioxide, and thirdly from the breakdown of acetic acid. About 70% of the methane (CH 4) produced worldwide can be traced back to the activity of methane-producing microorganisms called methanogenic archaea. ![]() She is particularly interested in studying the formation of methane, the second most important greenhouse gas on earth. Julia Kurth’s work focuses on the metabolism of archaea, single-cell microorganisms that can thrive even in extreme environments such as hydrothermal vents or hot springs. Just days before the official opening of their Research Center, the cooperation partners Max Planck Institute and Philipps University Marburg welcome their second research group leader at the Zukunftszentrum Mikrokosmos Erde/Microcosm Earth Center (MEC). © Max-Planck-Institut für terrestrische Mikrobiologie/Geisel ![]()
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