Sara BEIER

I am microbial ecologist and my work focuses on scrutinizing the functional response of microbial communities or individual community members on environmental changes. During recent research activities I have addressed niche-separation, species interactions and the response of community members with different life-strategies after experimental manipulations.

The focus of my current research project is on structure-function relationships that influence the community response after environmental disturbances. For this purpose I am using meta-omic data to assess community structures beyond diversity measures, such as the proportion of community members with distinct life history strategies.

My project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the Leibniz institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemuende and will be performed in collaboration with French partner groups (MARBEC, LOMIC).

The Baltic Sea as well as coastal lagoons in South France (Languedoc-Roussillon Region) provide sites that are characterized by either very stable or highly unstable environmental conditions, particularly concerning their salinity. Samples from these sites will serve to compare the genetic composition and the response of microbial communities directly or after exposure to new disturbances.

PhD student:

RAIN Angel

Sampling at the mouth of the Warnow River into the Baltic Sea, Germany

Sampling at the Ayrolle Lagoon, France

Selected Publications

• Beier S, Shen D, Schott T, Jürgens K (2017) Metatranscriptomic data reveal the effect of different community properties on multifunctional redundancy. Mol Ecol doi: 10.1111/mec.14409 (online publication ahead of print)
• Grubisic LM, Bertilsson S, Eiler A, Heinrich F, Brutemark A, Alonso-Saez L, Andersson AF, Gantner S, Riemann L, Beier S (2017) Lake bacterioplankton dynamics over diurnal timescales. Freshw Biol 62(1):191–204.
• Beier S, Rivers AR, Moran MA, Obernosterer I (2015) The transcriptional response of prokaryotes to phytoplankton-derived dissolved organic matter in seawater. Environ Microbiol 17(10):3466–3480.
• Beier S, Rivers AR, Moran MA, Obernosterer I (2015) Phenotypic plasticity in heterotrophic marine microbial communities in continuous cultures. ISME J 9(5):1141–1151.
• Peter H, Beier S, Bertilsson S,  Lindström ES, Langenheder S, Tranvik LJ (2011) Function-specific response to depletion of microbial diversity. ISME J  5(2):351–361.
• Beier S, Bertilsson S (2011) Uncoupling of chitinase activity and uptake of hydrolyses products in freshwater bacterioplankton. Limnol Oceanogr 56(4):1179–1188.