Biology Seminar | Dr. Elsa Abs, UC-Irvine | Microbial eco-evolutionary feedbacks to carbon cycling and climate change

Dr. Abs is a mathematical modeler who works at the intersection of eco-evolutionary theory, functional ecology and ecosystem biogeochemistry, with an emphasis on microbe-mediated soil carbon-climate feedbacks. They are interested in understanding where, when and how microbial eco-evolutionary responses to global change can affect ecosystem-scale soil carbon stocks and emissions. Dr. Abs received their PhD from the Ecole Normale Superieure of Ulm in Paris and the University of Arizona, where they used game-theory based models to predict microbial eco-evolutionary responses to environmental change (soil diffusion, temperature) and consequences for soil carbon. They are currently a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine studying how eco-evolutionary processes can affect microbiomes' functional response to selection using individual-based models of microbial litter decomposition. Starting in 2023, they will pursue research on integrating microbial emergent eco-evolutionary responses to drought into ecosystem models at the Laboratory for Sciences of Climate and Environment (LSCE) in Paris.