A wide variety of inhibitory substances can induce anaerobic digester upset or failure. In this work the possibility to improve the resistance of an anaerobic microbiota to a common pollutant, the phenol, was evaluated in a lab-scale semi-continuous bioreactor. An acclimation strategy, consisting in a regular step-wise adaptation of the microbiota to stressful condition was employed. Degradation performances were monitored and molecular tools (16S sequencing and ARISA fingerprinting technique) were used to track changes in the microbial community. The acclimation strategy progressively minimized the effect of phenol on degradation performances. After 3 successive disturbance episodes, microbiota resistance was considerably developed and total inhibition threshold increased from 895 to 1942 mg/L of phenol. Microbiota adaptation was characterized by the selection of the most resistant Archaea OTU from Methanobacterium genus and an important elasticity of Bacteria, especially within Clostridiales and Bacteroidales orders, that probably enabled the adaptation to more and more stressful conditions. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.