This event is part of our ongoing Thursday Seminar Series.

Microbial communities are crucial for our health and the functioning of the planet, but the rules governing how they assemble are still unclear. In this talk, I will outline mechanistic links between changes in the diversity and structure of microbial communities and variations in fundamental environmental variables, including available nutrients, temperature, and salinity. Overall, my work shows the power of combining theory-informed controlled experiments with data from communities in natural habitats to get a mechanistic understanding of the principles governing microbial community assembly.