Caves are accessible windows into the shallow subsurface, serving as transitional ecosystems between the photosynthesis-dependent surface and the deeper subsurface. Without a source of solar energy to ultimately power carbon (C) fixation (photolithoautotrophy), cave ecosystems are either reliant on surface-derived nutrients, recovering reducing power from the microbial oxidation of redox-sensitive...
Understanding and controlling microbial community assembly is critical to developing novel bioprocesses for nutrient and energy recovery from wastewater and preparing for global climate change. As molecular biology tools and DNA sequencing improve, microbial ecologists can progress from answering qualitative questions about “who is there, and what are they doing?”...