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Accurate climate projections require an understanding of the effects of warming on ecological communities and the underlying mechanisms that drive them 1-3 . However, little is known about the effects of climate warming on the succession of microbial communities 4,5 . Here we examined the temporal succession of soil microbes in a long-term climate change experiment at a tall-grass prairie ecosystem. Experimental warming was found to significantly alter the community structure of bacteria and fungi. By determining the time-decay relationships and the paired differences of microbial communities under warming and ambient conditions, experimental warming was shown to lead to increasingly divergent succession of the soil microbial communities, with possibly higher impacts on fungi than bacteria. Variation partition-and null model-based analyses indicate that stochastic processes played larger roles than deterministic ones in explaining microbial community taxonomic and phylogenetic compositions. However, in warmed soils, the relative importance of stochastic processes decreased over time, indicating a potential deterministic environmental filtering elicited by warming. Although successional trajectories of microbial communities are difficult to predict under future climate change scenarios, their composition and structure are projected to be less variable due to warming-driven selection.

The reason why people with ID frequently fall appears complex and multifactorial. Larger studies are required to verify the potential risk factors identified in this pilot study. Many of the standardized outcome measures commonly used in physiotherapy practice to quantify balance capabilities are not suitable for use in this population group, as participants found it difficult to comprehend what was required of them. Allowing the person to become familiarized with both the test and the tester may help to alleviate this problem. Videotaping and quantifying observations of strategies people use to perform common movements such as walking or turning maybe a more appropriate measurement tool of balance capabilities of people with ID than current standardized measures. This method would require rigorous development.

Functional diversity is increasingly recognized by microbial ecologists as the essential link between biodiversity patterns and ecosystem functioning, determining the trophic relationships and interactions between microorganisms, their participation in biogeochemical cycles, and their responses to environmental changes. Consequently, its definition and quantification have practical and theoretical implications. In this opinion paper, we present a synthesis on the concept of microbial functional diversity from its definition to its application. Initially, we revisit to the original definition of functional diversity, highlighting two fundamental aspects, the ecological unit under study and the functional traits used to characterize it. Then, we discuss how the particularities of the microbial world disallow the direct application of the concepts and tools developed for macroorganisms. Next, we provide a synthesis of the literature on the types of ecological units and functional traits available in microbial functional ecology. We also provide a list of more than 400 traits covering a wide array of environmentally relevant functions. Lastly, we provide examples of the use of functional diversity in microbial systems based on the different units and traits discussed herein. It is our hope that this paper will stimulate discussions and help the growing field of microbial functional ecology to realize a potential that thus far has only been attained in macrobial ecology.

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