For Cu contaminated soil, the abundance was always lower than for the corresponding control temperature/duration exposure, except for M. macrochaeta at 23◦C. The initial phase populations showed a lower growthrate increase with temperature, resulting in a flatter temperature-abundance curve (Fig. 1 and Table 2). For the later phases (61 and 84 days) growth-rates were either negatively or constant related with increasing temperature (except for M. macrochaeta) as in control conditions. Differences between control and Cu exposure to temperature were not only observed for abundance (above), but also for the development in the species composition (Figs. 2 and S2, supplementary material). The percentage of species-variability explained by temperature was about 3 times higher for the community in the control soil than in the Cu-contaminated soil (see PRC results).