Although soil microbes are responsible for important ecosystem functions, and soilsare under increasing environmental pressure, little is known about their resistance andresilience to multiple stressors. Here, we test resistance and recovery of soil methaneoxidizingcommunities to two different, repeated, perturbations: soil drying, ammoniumaddition and their combination. In replicated soil microcosms we measured methaneoxidation before and after perturbations, while monitoring microbial abundance andcommunity composition using quantitative PCR assays for the bacterial 16S rRNAand pmoA gene, and sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. Although microbialcommunity composition changed after soil drying, methane oxidation rates recovered,even after four desiccation events. Moreover, microcosms subjected to soil dryingrecovered significantly better from ammonium addition compared to microcosms notsubjected to soil drying. Our results show the flexibility of microbial communities,even if abundances of dominant populations drop, ecosystem functions can recover.In addition, a history of stress may induce changes in community composition andfunctioning, which may in turn affect its future tolerance to different stressors.