Soil microorganisms mediate carbon and nutrient fluxes in soils, and—as all organisms—are subject to eco‐evolutionary dynamics. Adaptation of soil microbial functionality to environmental conditions across space and time has consequences for biogeochemical fluxes that are often not explicitly considered in models describing soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics. Eco‐evolutionary optimization (EEO) tries to anticipate the outcome...

Warming alters soil microbial traits through ecological and evolutionary processes, directly influencing the decomposition of organic matter, which significantly affects global soil carbon emissions. Yet, soil carbon models largely ignore these processes and their implications for global responses to warming. Here, we incorporate eco‐evolutionary theory into a mechanistic model describing microbial soil carbon decomposition to...

Understanding microbial adaptation is crucial for predicting how soil carbon dynamics and global biogeochemical cycles will respond to climate change. This study employs the DEMENT model of microbial decomposition, along with empirical mutation and dispersal rates, to explore the roles of mutation and dispersal in the adaptation of soil microbial populations to shifts in litter chemistry, changes that are anticipated with clim...

Although substantial advances in predicting the ecological impacts of global change have been made, predictions of the evolutionary impacts have lagged behind. In soil ecosystems, microbes act as the primary energetic drivers of carbon cycling; however, microbes are also capable of evolving on timescales comparable to rates of global change. Given the importance of soil ecosystems in global carbon cycling, we assess the potent...