<p>Microbial communities act as living sensors of their environment, continuously adapting to and recording changes in their surroundings across temporal and spatial scales. This capacity, combined with their central role in global biogeochemical cycles, makes microbes ideal indicators of ecosystem health. However, our understanding of how these communities respond to anthropogenic perturbations remains limited. </p><p>In this talk, I will present two complementary approaches to decode environmental information from microbial communities. First, I will show that environmental temperature can be accurately predicted from microbial DNA composition alone, revealing fundamental principles of genome-wide thermal adaptation that transcend ecosystem boundaries. This work uncovers how evolutionary pressures shape microbial genomes across diverse habitats and provides insights into long-term community responses to climate change. Second, I will introduce a novel approach for measuring real-time bacterial growth rates in natural environments from a single sample, without prior knowledge on community composition. This method could enable us to track immediate ecological responses to environmental perturbations. By combining these evolutionary and ecological perspectives, we can begin to establish universal principles governing microbial responses to environmental change across different timescales. This multi-scale understanding is crucial for predicting and potentially mitigating the impacts of human activities on microbial ecosystems, from soil degradation to climate change.</p><p><strong>FOR THE LATEST UPDATES AND CONTENT ON SOFT MATTER AND BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS AT THE WEIZMANN, VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://www.biosoftweizmann.com/</strong></p>
