Environmental Microbiology

Microbial communities are responsible for energy and nutrient cycling and are massively involved in the planet’s sustainability. Microbes are directly involved in the dynamics of climate change by their impact on the destabilization, mineralization and sequestration of organic matter. The facets of microbial diversity consist of morphological, structural, metabolic, ecological or evolutionary diversity; however, the central question in microbial ecology—“Who eats what, where and when?”—queries how the key player in the community is to perform the most meaningful activity. To answer this, one major task is to identify the relationships between the composition of the microbial community and the functional processes.

Here, we introduce the section Environmental Microbiology. This section will be devoted to topics that remain focused on the study of microbial processes in the environment, microbial communities and microbial interactions; including the OMICS technologies and cross-disciplinary studies dedicated to basic and/or applied research. The editorial board will review all manuscripts submitted for publication in this section. However, articles which seem to be outside the scope of the subject matter listed here may be referred to another section of Microorganisms.