Deep beneath the Earth’s surface, in the pores and crevices of rock, live huge communities of microorganisms. They are invisible to the naked eye – yet they play a central role in the quality of our groundwater and in global cycles of matter. A research team led by Dr. Martin Taubert from the Cluster of Excellence „Balance of the Microverse“ at the University of Jena now shows: Life in the subsurface follows two fundamentally different strategies – with far-reaching consequences for environmental research and practice.