Matthias C. Rillig's Avatar

Matthias C. Rillig

@mrillig.bsky.social

Professor, ecology, FU Berlin, own views, book author Global change, soil, fungi, environment, microplastic, biodiversity πŸ§ͺ https://www.youtube.com/@mrillig https://www.youtube.com/@lifeinthesoil rilliglab.org https://matthiasrillig.substack.com

5,058 Followers  |  732 Following  |  1,291 Posts  |  Joined: 01.08.2023  |  2.0785

Latest posts by mrillig.bsky.social on Bluesky

Preview
Our minds are all so different - wouldn't it be cool to know more about this? But we're under the illusion that this isn't so (I think)

Wouldn’t it be cool to know more about how our minds work, and how this differs within a research team?

matthiasrillig.substack.com/p/our-minds-...

12.02.2026 19:53 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image Post image

Visiting Amsterdam earlier this week for the defense of @thecrobe.bsky.social & catching up with friends, also seeing some amazing facilities and research.

12.02.2026 18:37 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.

Reading in journal club:

"I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too"

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

09.02.2026 08:31 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

No. I dream with images...

08.02.2026 21:00 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Many people have no mental imagery. What’s going on in their brains? People with aphantasia are offering a window into consciousness.

Very interesting to me, especially since I have aphantasia. I wonder what it's like to have active mental imagery.

Many people have no mental imagery. What’s going on in their brains?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

08.02.2026 09:12 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

Spectacular talk today by Klaus Schlaeppi, University of Basel.

@kschlaeppi.bsky.social

06.02.2026 12:48 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
What is contentment in academia? Should you be content? Can I be content?

A stream of consciousness about being content in academia.

Wrote this mostly for myself, perhaps you also find it interesting.

open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

05.02.2026 14:22 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Looking forward to this meeting and the presentation!

02.02.2026 15:26 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Fungal ecology in the age of 'omics The advancement of technology in recent decades has given us an unprecedented ability to observe the natural world. With modern sequencing and bioinformatics technologies, we can obtain more informat...

Reading in journal club

Shelton et al.
Fungal ecology in the age of 'omics

@newphyt.bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

02.02.2026 08:17 β€” πŸ‘ 17    πŸ” 7    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Gott und die Welt mit Matthias Rillig "Wenn wir den Boden wertschΓ€tzen sind wir bereit, ihn mehr zu schΓΌtzen", sagt Matthias Rillig, Biologe im GesprΓ€ch mit Klaus BΓΆllert.

Mein Radiointerview mit ndr zum Bodenschutz und dem Buch "Mutter Erde"

www.ndr.de/kirche/podca...

01.02.2026 19:48 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I just call it a friend. Despite of distance and frequency of contact. Based on how it works when we actually are at the same place, which may only be once a year, and based on how I feel when they leave (sad).

30.01.2026 06:07 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Academic friendships and creativity Friends are important for creative ideas in science

Academic friendships are super important for creativity in science.

What's been your experience?

open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

29.01.2026 12:26 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Number and dissimilarity of soil amendments influence soil properties and plant communities in a greenhouse experiment Soil health is fundamental in supporting plant diversity and productivity. In turn, a species-rich plant community enhances soil functions and is cruc…

New paper out:

Li, Rongstock et al.
Number and dissimilarity of soil amendments influence soil properties and plant communities in a greenhouse experiment

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

24.01.2026 09:02 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Atmospheric microplastic emissions from land and ocean - Nature A global atmospheric microplastics dataset is compiled, and comparison with size-aligned microplastic models in the literature indicate that fewer microplastic particles are emitted into the atmospher...

Evangelou et al. in Nature
Atmospheric microplastic emissions from land and ocean

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

22.01.2026 12:32 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Environmental drivers can shift in effect direction when acting in concert with other factors Results from a recent paper from our group in Nature Communications

Environmental drivers can shift in effect direction when acting in concert with other factors

open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

22.01.2026 10:22 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Oh no!
I've always liked the idea that Prototaxites was a fungus.... πŸ˜…
But it looks like it wasn't.

22.01.2026 06:31 β€” πŸ‘ 10    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Wer weiß was Archivbâden sind....?

21.01.2026 16:59 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
JΓΆrg Blech & Matthias Rillig: "Mutter Erde" Ein GesprΓ€ch mit dem BodenΓΆkologen Matthias Rillig von der Freien UniversitΓ€t Berlin

Gestern mit rbb radio 3 ΓΌber das Buch "Mutter Erde" gesprochen, sowie ΓΌber den Boden des Jahres - den Archivboden.

@fubcp.bsky.social @bodendesjahres.bsky.social @bvboden.bsky.social
www.radiodrei.de/programm/sch...

21.01.2026 07:20 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
Stressor Combinations Shift Soil Microbial Communities From Rare to Unknown Taxa and Alter Genomic Strategies Effects of environmental stressor factor number on soil common, rare, and unknown taxa. High-stressor numbers reduce the abundance and diversity of rare taxa but increase unknown taxa and had no effe...

New paper out in Global Change Biology

Cheng et al.
Stressor Combinations Shift Soil Microbial Communities From Rare to Unknown Taxa and Alter Genomic Strategies

w/ @manudelbaq.bsky.social & others
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

20.01.2026 16:19 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

We also found exponential dynamics in a re-analysis of long-term soils data from the UK.

20.01.2026 15:33 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Eine sehr interessante Diskussion in der SKAE zur Diversifizierung von Anbausystemen von Nutzpflanzen; das Positionspaper ist gerade erschienen.

20.01.2026 12:41 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Or, asked another way: what can we do to increase the likelihood that researchers in 50 or 100 years will still be interested in reading our work?

19.01.2026 14:13 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Soil biodiversity effects on ecosystems - Nature Reviews Biodiversity Soil biodiversity is poorly studied compared to aboveground biodiversity, but is an important driver of ecosystem functioning. This Review discusses advances in research into the relationships between...

Reading in journal club

Eisenhauer et al.
Soil biodiversity effects on ecosystems

@eisenhauerlab.bsky.social @natrevbiodiv.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

19.01.2026 08:15 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
How many years into the future will people read our scientific output? Is it 5 years, 10 years, or a hundred years? Should we care?

Newsletter for this week is out:

How many years into the future will people read our scientific output?
Is it 5 years, 10 years, or a hundred years? Should we care?

matthiasrillig.substack.com/p/how-many-y...

15.01.2026 18:36 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1

It intends to describe that this is a global-scale study on soils (without necessarily implying that this was covering the full globe, since there aren't the data to do that).

15.01.2026 17:46 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Productivity-driven decoupling of microbial carbon use efficiency and respiration across global soils Resource-dependent microbial adaptability decouples microbial growth from respiration and limits soil carbon storage.

New paper just out in Science Advances, led by Humboldt fellow Yongxing Cui in the lab:

Productivity-driven decoupling of microbial carbon use efficiency and respiration across global soils

@fubcp.bsky.social @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social @humboldt-foundation.de

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

15.01.2026 17:39 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Ich kenne die Regeln nicht wie das entschieden wird, denke aber fΓΌr so etwas mΓΌsste sich das Buch vielleicht besser verkaufen?

15.01.2026 17:05 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Global change factors differ in effect when acting alone and in a multi-factor background - Nature Communications Urban soils are exposed to numerous human-driven stressors that can interact in unpredictable ways. This study concludes that the impact of adding one factor does not correspond to the impact of remov...

Link to the paper:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

15.01.2026 16:56 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
The Hidden Risk of Combined Stressors for Soils New study by researchers at Freie UniversitΓ€t published in β€œNature Communications” shows that independent environmental stressors such as heat, drought, and microplastics affect soils differently when...

Press release of @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social for our recent paper in Nature Communications.

The Hidden Risk of Combined Stressors for Soils

@fubcp.bsky.social
www.fu-berlin.de/en/presse/in...

15.01.2026 16:56 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Nicht dass ich wΓΌsste...

15.01.2026 16:53 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

@mrillig is following 20 prominent accounts