‘Profound Ignorance’: Microbes, A Missing Piece in the Biodiversity Puzzle | Mongabay

MBL Distinguished Scientist Mitch Sogin talks about microbial diversity in this feature from Mongabay.com.

Scientists are clear: the number of plant and animal species on Earth is declining. The climate crisis, habitat loss, pollution and the illegal wildlife trade are all pushing species toward extinction. Researchers especially worry that losing too much biodiversity could push the earth past a tipping point into irreversible change, and on into a new paradigm in which humanity and other life can’t survive.

Which partly explains humanity’s self-interest and urgency in understanding and maintaining global biodiversity. But there’s a catch: most of Earth’s biomass isn’t composed of plants and animals, but rather of microscopic organisms found almost everywhere — in soil, the upper atmosphere and deep ocean trenches. Microbes help us grow food on our farms and to process it in our gut; they give us diseases and help cure them.

Microbial community on human tongue — A microbial community on the human tongue. Each color represents a different type of microbe. The white material in the core represents the remnants of human tongue cells about which the microbes grow. Credit: Steven Wilbert, Gary Borisy, Forsyth Institute; Jessica Mark Welch, Marine Biological Laboratory.

An ominous question looms: how will climate change, along with other human-destabilized planetary boundaries — ocean acidification, deforestation and land use change, ozone depletion, nitrogen and plastics pollution, and maybe worse — alter the microbial world?