Microbes are often overlooked but crucial to most ecological processes.

I discuss the effects of human driven global change on microbes - especially in respect to soil microbes and their role in agriculture.

Dave Wilkinson has very wide interest in ecology and the environmental sciences.

He taught at Liverpool John Moores University for almost 25 years and is now visiting Professor in Ecology at the University of Lincoln and an honorary research fellow in archaeology at Nottingham University.

His book 'Fundamental processes in ecology; an Earth systems approach, won the British Ecological Societies book award for 2007 and he is currently writing a book on 'Ecology and natural history' for Harper Collins long-running New Naturalist series.